Yes, of course it's already three days into the new year, but until I get used to signing my checks with 2006, I can still talk about the New Year. (Checks? You still use checks to make payments?! Yes, I do. For my apartment rent.)
We had some delicious, warm, comforting and hearty dduk-gook on January 1, as the Koreans do to usher in the New Year. But it's not only the rice dumpling soup that Koreans eat on New Year's Day. We eat all kinds of dduk.
For the dduk uninitiated, "dduk" is a general term for a whole family of dumpling- or cake-like foods made with a base of rice flour. Many people will call it a "rice cake," but I don't, since dduk is absolutely nothing like those detestable diet puffed rice styrofoam disks. Korean dduk is similar to Japanese mochi, and comes in a huge variety of shapes, sizes, flavors, and colors.
Dduk used in soups and in savory Korean dishes are made from only regular rice flour. Sweet dduk (not really a dessert, but more like a snack), like the ones we received in a giant gift box from my sister's parents-in-law, are more often made with flour made from sweet rice, called chap-sahl. Sweet dduk can be made from chap-sahl mixed with different dried fruits, beans and grains (many of which have "medicinal" benefits), coated in different grain flours (that are usually naturally sweet), and filled with honey, sesame seeds, or sweet red bean paste.
