What a difference a year makes.

Is that the most used / cliched line ever? That’s what came to mind.

When you see the cards dealt to you it’s easy to line up all the negatives. Not in terms of what’s happening on the global level. More so on a personal level. But then as time passes, it heals. The setbacks will eventually be minor. Progress will be made. Recognize and utilize the value of today.

My curiosity has flowed from regularly eating out to regularly cooking in. Experimenting. Succeeding and failing in equal measure. Learning.

For me cooking is as important as researching and finding out the whole backstory or context behind a food culture or a particular dish. Chance has allowed us to cook more. Which makes me even more happier. To share and learn something new. Finding out and trying something new fascinates me. I have that base of knowledge of who I am and where I come from. But I’m also able to extend that new branch out to learn something new.

Last year we’re able to try a variety of Chuseok (추석) food and especially desserts at the South Korean Ambassador’s Residence.

I couldn’t have imagined this year we’d be spending Chuseok (추석) together in my home. Safely cocooned inside while it was pouring down outside. Cooking mandu (만두) and songpyeon (송편) till the early hours of the morning.

Based on what I’ve read songpyeon (송편) are traditionally steamed in pine needles (솔잎) . The effect is two fold. Firstly to ensure they don’t stick together, secondly the pine needles (솔잎) are supposed to impart some essence or flavour.

In South Korea people tend to go out and pick needles from the Korean red pine (소나무). Although it seems a lot of markets tend to sell them too. Surprising as it may seem I didn’t have access to the Korean red pine (소나무). But I do have a large park behind my home. And thanks to my gardener neighbour I found there were some native British pine trees there for us to forage from.

Luckily we were able to gain a few moments of respite from the rain to walk over to the park and hurriedly pick a few needles to use.

Ready to use after thoroughly washing them.

Next steps were shaping the dough. Mostly non-glutinous rice flour mixed with a bit of glutinous rice flour.

Dough was split into three. Of which we coloured two. It almost had a playdoh look to it.

The filling was already prepared; toasted sesame seeds with set honey and brown sugar (would’ve preferred them to be a bit sweeter).

As you can tell I spent more time photographing them being made, rather than making them.

Pre-steam photoshoot.

The third batch. Cooked half of the time of the previous batches.

Post-steam photoshoot. Not shown here. After steaming, drop for a few seconds in a bowl of cold water. Then in another bowl to be lightly coated in sesame oil. Giving that extra shine.

The orange songpyeon (송편) retained its shape the most. Hence photographed the most.

Best enjoyed when warm, but given the size of the steamer we’re limited in terms of how many we could eat.

Leaving plenty to enjoy the following day for breakfast.

Blessing I suppose. Grateful to be able to create such memories.