Wednesday, November 18, 2009

Memoirs of eggplant namul

It's purple vegetable, so it's always eye-catching. Every time I go to the Korean market, picking up three or four dark purple eggplants and suddenly fall into old memory.

When I was in middle school, I used to stop by my friend's house and go to school together on my way to school every morning. One day when I went to my friend's house, she didn't even get ready to go to school and reluctantly "did you come" under the blanket. The look on her face was dark. I didn't want to touch her depressed heart about what had happened at her home. I have more days to go to school by myself.

I heard from another friend that the friend's parents divorced and their siblings were scattered. She lived with her father to charge of household chores.

One day, after school, my friend asked me to go to her new house. The house was on the mountain and nobody was there. She went into the kitchen asked me to sit down for a while.

I sat looking around the village under the mountain, and waited for a long time. She came out with a table with white rice, kimchi, and eggplant namul. I didn't even eat it because I didn't like the color of the eggplant, but I had to eat it because of my friend's sincerity. The eggplant namul tasted like honey.

Whenever I go to a Korean market, I can't forget the taste of the eggplant namul. I pick up purple eggplants that look dark and sad like the friend. It takes a long time to make eggplant namul, so I do on a leisurely day. I often open and close a pot- lid, to pick out what was steamed first, fearing that the eggplant might become too steamed.

Take out the steaming eggplants and tear it into thin strips. When the chop garlic and green onion put into a purple eggplant, the color comes back. Sprinkle with pepper and add soy sauce to kill the color a little. Put sesame oil and sprinkle black sesame to finish the process. I try to make it as hard as I draw, but it doesn't taste like my friend's eggplant namul.

Not only is it hard to tear into thin strips the hot eggplants that just steamed, but also it takes a long time. How impatient it must have been to sit me on the floor and went into the kitchen and made the eggplant! I miss that old friend.

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