Did you know that Thanksgiving is not only celebrated in the United States and Canada, but also in countries like South -Korea and Japan? In South -Korea, the harvest festival Chusok is one of the two biggest holidays of the year. People celebrate it by dressing up in their traditional clothes and eating special food, playing games and dancing with their friends while thanking the ancestors for the harvest. The day follows the lunar calendar and is therefore not celebrated on a fixed date, but always on a day with full moon.
(Source: Wikipedia)Taste a different thanksgiving
One of the most traditional holiday desserts for Koreans are the half moon-shaped rice cakes called songpuyn, which are normally filled with either sesame seeds or chestnuts roasted with honey. You can prepare them a day ahead and store them in your refrigerator.Ingredients:
3 cups of rice flourwaterwashed pine needlessesame seed oil1 and 1/2 cups of roasted sesame seeds8 Tbs of sugarsaltwet cloth (thicker than cheese cloth)
Directions:- Add water into rice flour to make not-too-hard dough, and cover the dough with wet cloth.- Mix roasted sesame seeds, sugar and little salt. This is filling.- Make a little ball (1 inch) with rice dough, and use your thumb to make a hole. Put sesame seed filling (amount is up to you) into the hole and shove the rice dough to completely cover the filling. Make round shape or diamond shape. You made songpyun.- Boil water in a pot, and put a steamer over it. On steamer place wet cloth first, then put songpyuns and put pine needles over it. Finally, cover the steamer with another wet cloth and steam songpyuns for 30 – 40 minutes.- When songpyuns become a bit transparent, you can turn off the stove and wash songpyuns with cold water. Brush them with sesame seed oil.
(Source: http://www.finchpark.com/courses/writing/newspaper/2002/page5.html)