New Years Soup

In S. Korea one celebrates the start of a New Year with rice cake soup. There's, of course, variations to the dish depending on the household and even city or province, but almost always the soup involves rice cake, egg and seaweed in its ingredients.

The tradition is that by eating the soup you gain a year in age and good luck.

Luckily, there is a rice cake shop near the area I frequent:

Usually they only have a selection of rice cakes available inside this glass display:

But since it was the day before the New Year they had set up a small canopy and put out traditional favorites such as meat dumplings, kimchi dumplings and yakgwa:

And inside they had stars of the shop: rice cakes. They had two containers dedicated to the portion you desired. I picked the smaller portion as I only intended to cook for two.

All in all, I spent a reasonable price of ₩8,000 for the rice cakes and meat dumplings. And the result turned out to be satisfying:

Happy New Years to everyone!!!