Minari with doenjang and acorn jelly is mentioned in “Uhl-gool” by Julie Ae Kim in the Asian American and Feminist Collective Vol. 2 and is described as the author’s favorite food. Minari is also known as water dropwort, Korean watercress, Chinese celery, and Japanese parsley. This species of the dropwort genus is Oenanthe javanica and is grown in East Asia (China, India, Japan, Korea, Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, Taiwan, and Vietnam. Some other species of Oenanthe are actually poisonous and lethal. In Korea, water dropwort is called minari and is used for vegetable side dishes (vegetable side dish = namul, side dish = banchan) as well as a bibimbap topping. In addition to minari-muchim (seasoned minari), other popular namul are sigeumchi namul (seasoned spinach) and sukju namul (beansprout salad). Traditional Korean cuisine includes rice (bap), kimchi, a soup (guk) or stew (jjigae) (oftentimes doenjang-jjigae or doenjang-guk: fermented soybean paste stew, or kimchi jjigae), and various banchan. Sometimes a meat entrée is added. Banchan are essential and come in many varieties.
Kim describes her favorite meal as one cooked by her mother. The excerpt of Kim’s memoir tackles a seemingly simple concept: whenever a grown daughter visits home, her mother wants to go with her to get a facial, to do her uhl-gool. There’s obviously much more going on beneath the surface, including the growing up and out of one’s family, community, and culture. Secrets are an important concept in the excerpt, and Julie states that she “wasn’t ready for her [mother] to see the real me.” Hesitation ties in with secrecy, which accounts for Julie’s not wanting to come back home so quickly or to get the facial. I feel a sense of melancholy when reading the excerpt and thinking of her mother who seemingly just wants to see and spent time with her grown-up daughter. Cooking is a way to show one’s love for another, and the mother-cooking-for-child situation is very familiar to me. A sentence that captures much of this emotion between Julie and her mother is “the lack of English made up by the fluent and sharp Korean that could easily cut you with its bite or heal you with its unashamed love.” This description can be applied to the language expressed between Julie and her mother in general, as well as with the phrase “uhl-gool.” Julie does not know the Korean word for facial, but substitutes in “uhl-gool” which her mother calls it (the whole experience). On another note, minari can also fit this description of easily being able to “cut you with its bite or heal you with its unashamed love.” Most species of dropwort are poisonous, but minari is one of some edible species (and is somewhat bitter raw) that is a staple in simple but staple East Asian dishes.