Chuseok and Songpyeon

As much as I love all sorts of bread, pastries and cakes, I love my rice cakes, called tteok (떡) in Korean. Korean rice cakes are often made with glutenous rice and thus quite chewy for many western people, but for us Koreans that's one of the good things about them. Another thing is most of time they are not too sweet and can be eaten as good healthy snack. Quite sadly it doesn't seem that many of the younger generations in Korea appreciate the traditional rice cakes as much as we used to do.


I would say the most important festive season in Korea is autumn when the weather is at its loveliest and there is an abundance of fresh produce from the new harvest. Some might argue that the New Year is more festive but personally I think Chuseok in autumn beats it. Okay. What is Chuseok? Chuseok (15th of August on the lunar calendar) is something similar to Thanksgiving and as turkey is to Thanksgiving; Songpyeon (a kind of tteok in the shape of half moon) is to Chuseok. I have fond memories of making Songpyeon with my grandma, mum and aunties on the eve of Chuseok chatting away or just listening to the grown-ups chatting. Grandma used to say that if we make nice looking Songpyeons, we will get a good looking husband. And I always thought I should deserve a handsome husband if I ever going to get one.


This year, for the first time in my life, I have made Songpyeon without any help from my mum. Of course, they weren't perfect I couldn't get some of the things that you would get easily in Korea, such as pine needles. They put pine needles between layers of Songpyeon in the steamer to give them the unique aroma as well as to prevent them from sticking to each other. Anyway, it was not a complete disaster at least and we all enjoyed them including my brother's family who were visiting us at the time.


PS) This year Chusoek was on the 3rd of October and this post is very long overdue.