Geumsan and Punggi, the Ginseng Country

Geumsan lies in the uplands of South Chungcheong Province, and Punggi in the hills of Yeongju, North Gyeongsang Province. Both are basin towns ringed by mountains, and both are long associated with the cultivation of ginseng (Panax ginseng), the root the Korean kitchen calls insam. Geumsan ginseng is a registered Korean Geographical Indication, and the town's name is bound to the root in the way Sunchang is bound to gochujang.

Ginseng is a slow crop, and the land that grows it shapes the cooking around it. The plant is raised in shaded beds, with straw or cloth screens set over the rows, and it stays in the ground for about six years before it is lifted. The soil cannot be used again at once for the same crop, so growers move to fresh ground and the work is measured in years rather than seasons. This long patience is the first thing a cook should understand about the root, because it explains both its price and the sparing way it is used. Geumsan sits in a valley of cool nights and well-drained hillside soil, and it has long been the centre of the trade in the fresh root, with a market where fresh, dried and processed ginseng is sold. Punggi, in the Sobaek range, is the other name most often joined to the root, and its ginseng is sold as fresh and as red ginseng. Red ginseng is the root steamed and then dried, which turns it dark and gives it a firmer, more bitter character than the pale, fresh root. The distinction between fresh white, dried white and steamed red is the working vocabulary of the trade, and a cook buying the root should know which is meant. In the kitchen the root is rarely a main ingredient and is more often the quiet centre of a dish. The best known is samgyetang (삼계탕), a young chicken stuffed with glutinous rice, garlic, jujube and a small root of ginseng, simmered in water until the broth turns milky and the rice swells inside the bird. Maangchi gives it among her soups, and the method is simple: the stuffed bird is closed with its own legs or a string and cooked slowly in a covered pot. The ginseng lends a faint bitterness and an earthy, woody scent that the sweetness of jujube and the richness of the chicken answer. The root also appears sliced thin and eaten raw with honey or dipped in gochujang, steeped in tea, preserved in honey as a sweet, and soaked in spirit. Fresh roots are washed carefully, since the fine rootlets hold soil, and are often cooked whole so that the shape of the root is part of the presentation. Ginseng belongs to the long Korean habit of treating a few strongly flavoured roots, among them bellflower, burdock and lotus, as ingredients for slow cooking rather than for the quick pan. The settled history is plain on one point: the cultivation of ginseng in controlled beds, rather than the gathering of wild roots, is what made a regular trade possible, and the Joseon period valued the root highly and regulated its commerce. What the cook inherits from Geumsan and Punggi is therefore an understanding of time as an ingredient, a root that asks for years in the ground and then for gentle, unhurried heat at the table.

Ginseng tastes of earth and wood, with a lingering bitterness and a faint sweetness that grows as the root cooks. Red ginseng is darker, firmer and more bitter than the fresh root, and a small piece is enough to mark a broth. In samgyetang the bitterness is set against the sweetness of jujube and the mild richness of the chicken and rice, and the soup is seasoned only at the table with salt and pepper so that the root stays clear.