Korean rice cake / 떡

Tteok (떡) (also spelled ddeock, duk, dduk, ddeog, or thuck) is a class of Korean rice cakes made with glutinous rice flour (also known as sweet rice or chapssal), by steaming. Normal rice flour can be used for some kinds of tteok. There are hundreds of different kinds of tteok eaten year round. In Korea it is customary to eat tteok guk (tteok soup) on New Year’s Day and sweettteok at weddings and on birthdays. It is often considered a celebratory food and can range from rather elaborate versions with nuts and fruits down to the plain-flavored tteok used in home cooking. Some common ingredients for many kinds of tteok are mung bean, red bean, and sweet red bean paste, Korean mugwort, jujube and other dried fruits, sesame seeds and oil, sugar, and pine nuts.

Picture’s source

Picture’s source

Please visit this source for detail: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tteok

 

Korean cultural activities…

It was a program prepared by my university. All foreign students who take Korean course went out to a football yard where all stuffs were prepared for us. It was a real experience on Korean culture i have eve gone though. We enjoyed a lot of things on that day…..

Phaeng ngi (팽이) is a Korean name for a spinning ball game. To play this game we need two people. The first person must throw the ball to play ground while trying to spin it. The other person who is partner will take a stick with short rope attached to it and try to hit the surrounding of ball to keep the ball rotate all the time. The team keep doing like this as long as they can. The team that could spin or keep rotating the ball in long time without letting it collapse, will be win the game. For more detail about the game please click hear [Korean version].

This is also an interesting game of Korea. It is a group work task to win. By holding the rope attached to the flat cloth and forming a circle, they keep lifting up a small ball several times, and they repeat doing it without letting it fall to the ground.

This game is called Dan chhae jul normgi (단체줄넘기). It is kind of funny game. Two people who hold the rope will spin or swing it around, and a of group people representing the opponent group must jump up together at the same time so that the rope will be unable to touch their legs. If the spinners is unable to swing the rope due to the opponent’s legs, they will take turn as jumper and the opponent will come and swing the rope instead. 😉

This is an example of Korean traditional wedding. Even though Korean is in its globalization, but traditional ceremony is still well preserved. As i know, during the wedding day, pribe and groom wear their traditional cloth called hanbuk (한복). The pribe and groom will be put in two different stretchers. They come and pays respect to each other, to their parents, and to their ancestors through their traditional ways.

This is called Tork or 떡 in Korean. It’s Korean rice cake mix with some kind of nut and it tastes really great.

…….It was time to experience how to make Korean rice cake. More about Tork/ 떡.

This is called Samul nuri or 사물놀이which mean ” Four instruments”. The performers use this four instruments to amuze us. Those instrument is called Kkwaenggwari (a small gong), Jing (a larger gong) Janggu (an ourglass-shaped drum) and Buk (a barrel drum similar to the bass drum).

Finally, we ate rice cake soup. It’s is another type of rice cake. In Korea, they eat this rice cake soup or 떡국 during the first day of Korean New Year (Lunar calendar).