The AAFC History zine excerpts Julie Ae Min’s memoir. In the excerpt, she returns home after several months of excuses to find her mom cooking her favorite food, which includes sliced acorn jelly (14).
Acorn Jelly, or “Dotori Muk,” is a Korean dish made using either fresh acorns or store-bought acorn powder. With fresh acorns, they are washed, soaked in water, grinded up, sifted, and finally boiled, to create a hazel jiggly jelly (Korea Times). With powder, it’s much simpler. One just boils “dotori mukgaru,” or acorn jelly powder, with water and salt, with some steps of straining, stiffing, and cooling (Epicurious). This powder is a staple of Asian supermarkets (NYT).
This dish is said to have begun as a way for villages to feed themselves – they would forage for wild acorns and them mill them on millstones (NYT). The more traditional way is more complicated and laborious, with some risks. Raw acorns contain tannins, and too much tannin is toxic. That’s why the soaking and rinsing is so important, and some oaks have more tannins, requiring more time to leech the toxins from their acorns (NYT).
In the reading, the reference to acorn jelly is evocative of a home staple, the experience of coming home from college to your mom making your favorite foods. It’s also about the author’s return home to Bayside as a immersion in a Korean immigrant community, and the tension between her childhood life and community and the one she’s started to form for herself.
Citations:
AROBINSONNEAL. KOREAN ACORN JELLY (“DOTORIMUK”). 28 Feb. 2013, www.epicurious.com/recipes/member/views/korean-acorn-jelly-dotorimuk-52020701.
Lee, Debbie. What the Squirrels Know: Acorns for Dinner. 8 Oct. 2010, www.nytimes.com/2010/10/13/dining/13acorn.html.
Sang-hee, Han. Enjoy Dotori Muk at Hansoban. 6 Aug. 2009, www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/culture/2020/08/135_49700.html.