Naengi Muchim (Seasoned Shepherd's Purse)

Shepherd's purse (Capsella bursa-pastoris) grows wild in fields, along paths and at the edges of farmland all over Korea, and it is one of the very first greens to appear when the ground thaws — the National Folk Museum's food encyclopedia calls it a herald of spring. It goes by many local names, from nasaengi and nasangu to nasi, and in older texts is written with the Chinese character je (薺).

People have eaten it for a very long time. The Encyclopedia of Korean Culture points to the Chinese Book of Songs, which compares something sweet to shepherd's purse, as evidence of its ancient use, and to Korean texts such as the eighteenth-century Jeungbo sallim gyeongje, which describes the plant as warming and recommends it as a porridge. In Korea its best-known form is naengi-guk, a doenjang soup listed in the second-month verses of the nineteenth-century farming song Nongga wollyeongga; the same song pairs "dallae kimchi and naengi soup" as foods that revive a jaded appetite. Households also dug the roots in winter and kept them in storage pits for soup.

As a banchan, it is usually eaten cooked rather than raw. The roots are scrubbed rather than trimmed, because their sweet, nutty flavor is the point, and the plant is blanched for only a few seconds before being dressed. Depending on the region, the dish may be called naengi-namul, naengi-muchim or nansi-muchim.

• Unusually nutrient-dense for a green: the Korean Food Composition Table lists raw shepherd's purse at about 3.8 g protein, 322 mg calcium and 9.5 mg iron per 100 g, along with beta-carotene and folate — high figures for a leafy vegetable. The iron is the plant (non-heme) form, which the body absorbs less readily than iron from meat.
• Vitamin K: a serving supplies more than a day's adequate intake of vitamin K.
• Fiber: the roots and leaves together give a serving close to 4 g of fiber.
• Traditional and early research: Korean herbal texts regarded naengi as warming and good for the organs, and the National Folk Museum's encyclopedia mentions Korea Food Research Institute work in rodents on fatty liver. These are traditional beliefs and early laboratory findings, not established effects in people.

• Doenjang-dressed: the most familiar version, with doenjang, soy sauce, garlic, green onion, sesame salt and sesame oil — the fermented soybean paste suits naengi's earthy roots.
• Stir-fried: instead of simply being tossed with its seasoning, the blanched naengi can be stir-fried briefly with its seasoning — the folk-culture encyclopedia describes the namul as either dressed or stir-fried.
• Flower stalks: once the plant bolts and its leaves toughen, cooks cut just the flower stalks and dress them the same way.
• Soups and stews: beyond namul, naengi is most often eaten in doenjang soup or stew, with clams or a dusting of soybean flour, and it also goes into porridge, rice, jeon and even kimchi.