This is the typical dish for the New Tear’s Day. Our people thought that this day everthing comes to them and it must be clean and dignified and so they boiled the soup with the white rice cake.
Because the rice cake soup was the essential dish this day, the people…
- Gruel made of red beans with rice dumplings in it.
Our people have eaten this gruel on the winter solstice.
So, they think that they must eat this gruel this day.
Regarding this gruel, there are some mysterious stories but in fact, people regarded this day as the first day of next year, the great holiday and this day they cooked the rice gruel with red beans mashed and strained.
Since the rice cake soup was the indispensible dish for the New Year’s Day, the people woulh ask the other’s age by comparing it to the mumber of the rice cake soup bowls: for example, “How many bowels of rice cake soup have you eaten?”
It’s good to boil it with the pheasant meat but in the absence of the pheasant meat, the chicken can be used.
There are several kinds according to the localities.
For example, the people of Chungchong province made it by kneading the powder white rice with hot water, forming the round and thin shape, pouring it into the soup and boiling it.
There was the peculiar rice cake soup called “Zorang rice cake” in Gaesong.
Zorang rice cake looks as if two glass beads attached with each other.
In Gaesong, on the last day of the year, all the family members made the Zorang rice cakes of acoccon shape by pushing the bar rice cake with the bamboo knife all night, and in the morning of the New Foor’s Day, they ate the Zorang rice cake soup.
So in each family of Gaesong area, there were always the bamboo knifes corresponding to the number of family members.
For the following reason, Zorang cake was pushed with the bamboo knife. In the period of Koryo, the was the king who had a acute sense of taste. He disliked the rice cake cut with metal knife and asked to cut the rice cake only with the wooden knife. Such made rice cake was not good to see but was very delicious. As a resut, in Gaesong the bamboo knife was widely introduced. The rice cake soup is widely used as the regular dish as well as the special food for the New Year’s Day in our country.