Pine Nut Harvest

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Pine nuts pack a lot of flavor and nutrients in their little shells. Fall is pine nut harvesting season and today we provide you with some information on this tasty and healthy nut.

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Chungnyeongsan Mountain in Gyeonggi-do Province is Korea's largest pine nut producer, accounting for 60% of the domestic output. When harvesting pine nuts one has to climb up a pine tree as tall as 20 meters and use a 9-meter-long pole to beat the pine cones off the tree. Then the pine cones are taken to the threshing floor to separate the nuts and peel the inner skin before getting the golden yellow pine nuts.

[Soundbite] Prof. Kim Yeong-seong(Shinhan Univ.) : "Pine nuts contain lots of unsaturated fatty acids, which are known to prevent senile dementia and promote growth in children."

One of the most well-known local specialties is pine nut makgeolli. First, rice is steamed for about five hours in a big tank. Then yeast is added before starting a fermentation process at 28 degrees, a temperature at which leavening activity is at its most robust. In about a week makgeolli lees float to the surface. That should be skimmed off, leaving only the crude makgeolli solution. Now enters the pine nut, the key to pine nut makgeolli. The ground pine nuts are added to the crude makgeolli solution. Water is added to dilute the mixture to reach the alcoholic content level of 6%. There you have the delicious pine nut makgeolli. Let's visit a restaurant that specializes in pine nuts. This dish is a mushroom stew made with pine nut tofu. Soybeans soaked in water for about 10 hours are ground together with pine nuts. The resulting soybean and pine nut solution is cooked in a huge iron pot. These curdled lumps are what we know as sundubu or soft tofu. The curdled soybean lumps are put in a mold and pressed to squeeze out the liquid. Then pine nuts are scattered over the tofu before pouring on another soybean layer. It's then covered with cloth and pressed down by hand to harden it into pine nut tofu. Now the pine nut tofu is placed in a wide pot with mushrooms and assorted vegetables. Clear broth is poured over the ingredients to make a delicious and healthy stew.

[Soundbite] Hwang Hye-yeong(Customer) : "My children like them a lot. Pine nuts are healthy food."

Pine nuts full of nutrients are one of autumn's treasures.