Happy Chuseok!

I was so excited when my 10am English class ended today!!! I feel like I'm back in school (well, I am). The eleven o-clock hour marked the beginning of my first vacation in Korea. The real freedom comes tomorrow afternoon at 11am, when I finish my weekend duties, but I'm done with classes until Thursday morning! The reason for my vacation... Chuseok.

Chuseok (also called Hangawi) is a holiday of thanksgiving that falls on the 15th day of the eighth month of the Korean lunar calendar. Similar to our American Thanksgiving, it is a time for families to gather and to eat special food. Families also use this time to offer gifts of food to their ancestors at their family grave sites. Christians in Korea also go to grave sites, but only offer their respects.

I've heard that EVERYONE goes to visit their families over Chuseok and the highways are basically one big traffic-jam. I'm hoping that this isn't true, because I'm headed to celebrate with my "Korean family" -i.e. my American, Canadian and British friends in Seoul. But, at least I'll be heading the opposite direction of the majority of people. (Around one-fifth of the population lives in Seoul and will hopefully be driving out of the city.)

Back to the subject at hand...

I'm including a recipe for one of the traditional Chuseok dishes, just in case you'd also like to celebrate a bit of Chuseok with me.

Songpyeon: traditional Chuseok rice cakes

Ingredients:
-3 cups freshly powdered rice flour (Make sure that salt is added when the rice gets powdered at the mill.)
-1/2 cup sugar water
-sesame oil
-salt
-pine needles

Filling options:
-mung beans
-green beans
-sesame seeds
-jujubes
-chestnuts
-squash
-pumpkin

Directions:

1. Rub rice powder with hands and pass through a sieve (I think a normal flour sifter would work).

2. Mix the powder with boiling water sweetened at the ratio of one part sugar to six parts water. Knead and let the dough stand wrapped in a wet cloth.

3. Make a ball out a small piece of the dough and shape it into a circle in the palm of your hand and fill with filling and mold it into shape. (Squeeze the dough to eliminate air from the filling to prevent the cake from opening during steaming.) Usually one cup of rice powder will yield eight pieces of songpyeon.

4. Spread pine needles and well rinsed and drained and on the bottom of the steamer. Place the songpyeon on pine needles and steam for 40 minutes. If pine needles are not available and use a piece of cloth.

5. When the songpyeon is cooked, rinse and brush with sesame oil and salt. Or add 1/2 tablespoon salt and 1/2 tablespoon sesame oil to 2 cups water and rinse songpyeon in it.

Note: I adopted this recipe from “A Korean Mother`s Cooking Notes” by Chang Sun-young, (Ewha Womans University Press).

The yummy fruit, pictured above, is from a street vendor in Itaewon, the American Ghetto of Seoul.