Dotori-muk-muchim (Acorn Jelly Salad)

Dotori-muk-muchim lives or dies after the knife. The jelly looks sturdy when it sits in the block, brown and quiet, but once you cut it, it has no pride at all. Stir it like cucumber salad and it collapses. Cut it large, season the greens first, then fold the muk through gently. That is the whole dish.

At the market, I buy dotori-muk when the weather asks for something cool beside rice, not heavy: spring ssukat if the leaves are tender, summer cucumber and perilla, winter lettuce and onion when that is what the basket gives. Acorn jelly is nutty and faintly bitter, and the dressing should wake that bitterness, not bury it. Soy sauce, gochugaru, sesame oil, garlic, vinegar, one measured teaspoon of sugar. No gochujang here. Paste makes the bowl dull.

Master Seong-nyeo made us dress the greens in one bowl and add the muk last. The soft thing arrives last if you want it to remain itself. Notebook 31 still has that line beside the amounts. Tonight this asks only for drying your greens well, soaking the onion, cutting the jelly thick, and serving it as soon as it is dressed. 손맛 is real; I measure it anyway, so someone else can bring the same clean bowl to the table.