It may be everyday comfort food for Koreans living abroad but tteok-guk used to be a big deal when celebrating Seollal. ( It still is? ) Tteok-guk was served to celebrate everyone's collective birthday party. No blowing out of candles on a calorie-laden cream cake but downing of thin slices of rice-cakes swimming in bowls of hot steaming beef broth topped with green onions, egg slices and seaweed. Kids who fancied claiming equality with their older siblings were often conned into wolfing more bowls by teasing relatives.
It's easy to forget that rice wasn't always the staple food at the Korean dinner table. One can easily find packets of pre-sliced garaetteok in any supermarket in Korean these days but in the past, Koreans had to make do with barley, millet or noodles made from buckwheat, arrowroot or sweet potatoes for their daily starch or carbo fix. Bear in mind as well that rice was particularly hard to come by in winter.
Haven't found a website that shows how garaetteok is actually made from the rice flour ( the rough recipe goes something like this: grind the rice into flour - steam it - roll it out into long sausage-like shapes) but I read somewhere that it used to take three days to make. While the shape of garaetteok signifies good health and long life, the white colour denotes purity and cleanliness. It's then cut up into shapes resembling coins to express the wish for prosperity and wealth in the year ahead.
Beef was another rare commodity ( these days, it's just expensive and fraught with political and nationalist overtones - does one buy local beef or imports from the US or Australia? ) so the beef stock for the dish was a really special treat for Koreans of the past. In even earlier times, the soup was made from the stock of pheasant meat or chicken.
Now it's time to 'fess up. I haven't eaten tteok-guk before so I'm going to scout around the Korean restaurants near my home this Seollal period to see if I can sample the stuff. If that doesn't work out, well I'll just have to google for a recipe and get cracking in the kitchen. All this googling for pics has whetted my appetite and roused my curiosity!
sources:
http://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/news/art/2010/01/153_38384.html
http://yunhee66.wordpress.com/2009/10/10/kalap-di-korean-mart/
http://joonsfamily.com/lofiversion/index.php/t8572-100.html
http://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tteokguk
http://oneforkonespoon.wordpress.com/2009/04/13/tteok-guk-comfort-food-for-kings/
http://www.asianewsnet.net/news.php?id=3621&sec=9
