One of the ways to eat vegetables in Korean style

In Korea, we eat lots of different types of vegetables. They are not only farmed vegetables but also foraged in a wild environment such as mountains or country sides. Thus many different ways of eating vegetables have been evolved in Korea. One of the ways to eat vegetables in Korea is ‘blanching them and drying them’ for keeping over winter time as Korean winter is severely cold. These vegetables are called ‘name’ in general.

In olden days, as you all can imagine that we did not have a high tech to grow vegetables in winter, which means people in Korea had to develop some ideas of supplying vegetables in winter. Kimchi was also one of the good source of the winter vegetable supply to people in Korea traditionally. 

In my first time, I tried to make my own ‘namul’ this summer. I had some Korean mollies from a Korean supermarket which had green top bits together. This part of greens are made into a kind of ‘namul’ called ‘siren’ which has full of vitamin C. Traditionally, it is made over winter time in Korea after ‘Kimjang’ season. But I had made this ‘namul’ in summer when it was sunny. I think it was still good taste!

You have to soak dried namul before cooking and boil them with lowest heat for at least 40minutes before seasoning. I normally season name with Korean soy sauce, bean paste called ‘deon-jang’ and wild sesame powder.

In this photo of ‘namul dish’, I made 7 different types all together.  They were made with wild fern shoots(go-sa-ri), dried mooli(moo-map-rang-ee), wild Chee namul, dried courgette(hauberk-namul), and dried mooli green(si-re-gi).