I want to talk about maeshil. It's the South Korean pickled plum. They have them in Japan and China, too, but they're different in Korea as far as I can tell. I learned about these plums within my first year of working in Korea when I went to the Maewha festival in the Gwangyang, near Mokpo (in the South)
Here's my disclaimer: I enjoyed my time in Korea, but I was not so impressed with the country as a tourist destination. They have done well for themselves, but there's a reason nobody goes there for vacation, and it's because South Korea SUCKS at marketing itself. Just the fact that I feel compelled to *specify* "SOUTH Korea" is a really bad sign. It should be common knowledge that Americans just don't go to the North to teach, and the South is über-developed and dare I say over-the-top. But culturally they don't come close to competing with other countries, because nothing is old there except the mindsets of the people over 55. I actually had a REALLY interesting conversation with a Korean War vet last weekend, who was there in the early '50s. He said they all dressed in funny costumes. Of course after brief clarification, I knew exactly what he was talking about. That means everyone was wearing the traditional hanbok just 70 years ago, which you now see in folk museums and at formal events (and in that case, only the bride and groom at a wedding or family at a funeral, or just everybody in a home but not out in public). That means that just 70 years ago, everybody still walked around looking like this:
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| pinterest.com, design.co.kr |
I don't think that was actually my point at the beginning of my digression, but I digressed and I guess that's what happens.
Where was I! MAESHIL! Today I was writing one of my three Korean friends from my 2 years in the country, and I told her she should come visit me and bring her mother's maeshil. Then I remembered that might be illegal. But then again, I know people who have refrained from eating it long enough to bring it into the country. So maybe there's still hope!!
Maeshil is a little green plum. Its Latin name is prunus mume, and apparently you can order it on the internets in fresh form. It is amazing. First you harvest it, and it's inedibly hard and sour. Then you put equal parts sugar and de-pitted plum into an air-tight container and keep it in a dry, dark place for about 100 days. After 100 days, it becomes the elixir of life. Some may think I'm being dramatic, but THEY HAVEN'T HAD MAESHIL. Maeshil, this blog post is for you. You might not be famous, I mean let's face it -- you come from a place nobody really cares about. But dayum are you good. The end result is many little nuggets of heaven in a syrup they make juice out of. A friend of mine said it kind of tasted like wine, and Hubby says they taste more like baked apples in cinnamon than anything. I'd say that's the closest they come to: crisp, baked apples with a hint of alcohol in a thick clear syrup packed with sugar and antibiotics. Since there's so much sugar, one should not eat too much maeshil at one time. It's meant to be taken as a digestion supplement, especially when one is not feeling very well. One or two pickled plums, instead of 30 or 40 or as a meal replacement, you see (ask me how I know). And it makes sense -- they're fermented, essentially, so packed with probiotics, and they're plums which are known to help clean out the digestive system. Japan also ferments plums but they use a different kind of plum which is usually mango-colored and they use SALT, not sugar. And I liked Japan, so this part is sad: these plums are disgusting. Sorry, that's putting it lightly -- the ones I tried made me want to vomit on the spot in front of the asshole who gave them to me thinking they would fill my void of the real thing when they were unavailable. "Unavailable?" You ask. "what is that word? Sometimes you have to pay a bit more and search the internets, but nothing is ever impossible to find!"
WRONG. I have tried everything, including searching the internet in Korean (which I CAN do, no big deal). Nobody sells pickled plums. You know how you get them? Your grandmother makes them. Maybe she'll sell her extra at the festival in Gwangyang the following year which lasts for a whopping 2 weekends at the end of February, or if you're my friend's mother, she'll give some to the poor foreigner whose attempt at pickling her own ended in a moldy, devastating, crushing failure of life. I have no idea how the Koreans make so much extra maeshil. Where do they keep it?!?! And WHY don't they sell it at any stores??? In the US, you can buy literally anything in the store or on the internet. The Koreans really aren't thinking this one through. I have been from store to store in Korean and asked nonstop about their maeshil (call it a bit of an obsession I had for a while) and all the clerks laughed at me. Partly that was because they saw a white girl speaking English and had a mixed reaction of awe and anxiety of performing correctly in front of someone with a different color skin from them -- it's amazing what isolation of a race does to mass mentality -- but also they thought I was dumb. Nobody sells maeshil. You have to buy the fruit when it's in season (again, 2 weeks out of the year) and then *successfully* pickle a shit ton of it if you ever want to eat it. Granted, binge-eating it is not what is recommended, but if I'm a paying customer I get to do what I want!
So before I conclude this ode to maeshil, here is a picture of it, in all its glory:
... AAAAHHHH I can't find the picture I took of them. This is a picture I'm taking from a different website and apparently they're Chinese salted plums, but they look exactly the same so maybe the Chinese use the same fruit but with salt instead of sugar:
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| 21food.com |
If anybody finds these and wants me to eat them for you, let me know. I'll be there, as long as it's not in Korea because, well, that's not very exciting.
Till next time!
