Black paper the seaweed
By Kay Lee
Glancing over my Customs Declaration Card, a young customs officer at John F. Kennedy airport asked, “Would you open your bag, please?” I opened it, and a pungent smell of a stony shore of Korea blew over his face and mine.
``What are these stacks of black papers?” the young man asked. Almost all of the customs officers at New York airports knew that a lot of Korean visitors bring in ``gim” and airtight jars of kimchi from Seoul. The customs canine even recognizes them as not harmful to Americans. (That was years ago, the U.S. Center for Disease Control and Prevention might have different rules on the imported foods now)
``It’s gim in Korean, nori in Japanese, and seaweed, according to Americans,” ``What are you going to do with whatever you call it?” the young man asked. ``We eat it with rice,” I smiled at him. He was still puzzled; how on earth people eat gross paper from the sea. It wasn’t on the list of the controlled food items. ``Thank you. You may close the bag.” It’s much better than the garlic fermented kimchi smell. However, the young New Yorker wasn’t impressed of the Korean shore smell.
I like Korean gim very much. Its ocean fragrance and fresh taste coming from seawater goes so well with steaming hot rice. I get homesick when I eat Korean gim. Japanese people treat Korean seaweed as one of the most precious side dishes, after matsutake mushroom. They shred the carbon paper size original gim into about the size of airmail stamp and relish every bite of it with white rice. We Koreans are much more luxurious and slice it into about the size of a dollar bill.
Once Korean gim was famous among the actresses in Hollywood, I heard, as it was known to contain some ingredients that glaze women’s hair. If the late Elizabeth Taylor tasted it, I hope she ate the paper with rice, not with vinegar mixed salad. It’s like tasting a fine wine; it shouldn’t be eaten with food that is too spicy.
The many glossy black haired Koreans carrying a lot of gim disembarking at Los Angeles airport might have something to do with the Hollywood rumor. Gim, however, because of its paper shape couldn’t have an appealing effect on American dinner tables in Beverly Hills. It’s not fitting to go with steak, pizza or sandwiches. Once, I cooked it with pasta, it was a super tasty dish.
Gim was once considered a table luxury and seaweed farmers still insist that it’s a mass of nutrients. One sheet of A4 size gim is nutritiously comparable with two chicken eggs. It is harvested in January and February. The spore reproduction of seaweed is temperature sensitive and it breeds only in cold sea water and disappears when the water temperature rises above 15 degrees Celsius.
Gim needs seawater to grow but it must be exposed to the air too. The calm sea waters around the West and South coasts of South Jeolla Province are ideal for gim farming as they have a suitable range of tides that move the seaweed nets in and out of the water regularly; ideally controlling the life cycle of the seaweed algae. In addition, gim reacts to the moon’s gravitational pull.
The high demand of seaweed consumption in both Korea and Japan provides plentiful opportunities and work. Doesn’t everyone eat three meals a day, then why are men so obsessed about writing only about politics? Please enjoy gim with Korean rice and feel the fresh ocean air once in a while.
The writer is a mother of two grown up boys and lives in Old Tappan, N.J., in the United States. Her email address is kayleenam@gmail.com.