Lunar New Year!

Happy Lunar* New Year, from our Korean baby!
It's the year of the dragon, a very auspicious year. Our Chinese friends predict that many children will be born this year since a lot of parents want dragon children. I guess we'll have to wait and see if that's true.

In honor of the New Year, I made duk mandu gook, a traditional soup that Koreans eat every New Year's Eve. I became a little obsessed with the stuff near the end of our time in Korea and I make it often now. I thought I'd share my recipe because it's super quick and awesomely delicious, especially on a cold night.

I adapted my recipe from this recipe from the New York Times.

Ingredients
12 Mandu/Gyoza/Potstickers
4 cups beef broth, preferably Korean (see note)
1/2 bunch scallions
1 cup frozen Korean rice cakes, sliced (see note)
1 egg, lightly beaten
Black pepper, to taste
1 tablespoon toasted sesame seeds
Toasted seaweed (optional), julienned.

1. Place a large pot filled with broth over high heat. Prepare scallions: discard white parts, chop a few inches of green parts into rounds and slice remainder lengthwise. When broth boils, add 3 to 4 dumplings a person, reduce heat to medium and cook 5 to 7 minutes.

2. Add frozen rice cakes and scallion slices and cook until cakes are soft, another two minutes. Add eggs and gently stir. Shut off heat and season with black pepper. Ladle into bowls and garnish with scallion rounds, sesame seeds and seaweed, if using.

Note: For beef broth, dashida powder is sold in bags at Korean markets. Dissolve one teaspoon per cup of boiling water. Korean rice cakes, called duk, are sold in the freezer section of Korean markets; the wide slices are the most traditional. This makes 2-4 servings. It's best eaten right away; it doesn't always reheat well.

The two main ingredients are mandu and duk. Duk is a glutinous cake made from rice flour. When I first tried it, I didn't like it. It's weird and doesn't have much flavor. But it's kinda grown on me. My local Asian market doesn't carry the sliced duk so I just make do with the round kind that is generally used for dukbokki. I have made my mandu from scratch before (Cook's Illustrated has a great recipe), but I typically buy mine. I prefer the pork filled mandu, since that's what they use in Korea, but you could use chicken or beef potstickers too.

You could use regular beef broth but dashida (Korea beef broth) is SO much better and easy to find in any Asian market. This is the broth powder that I brought home with me from Korea. I also sometimes throw in a little anchovies powder because other recipes I saw included it, but it's not essential.

The trick with the egg is to slowly and gently stir your broth with a chopstick while pouring in your beaten egg. I love the egg. And in less than 30 minutes, you have a delicious Korean soup. Mmmm.

After dinner (and the baby had been tucked away in bed), I broke out the box of hotteok I bought before we left Korea. There was a little stand near our apartment in Seoul that sold these delicious cinnamon filled pancakes, which are a popular Korean street food, especially in the winter months. I think they'd be super easy to re-create even without the mix. I think next year, I'll definitely have to find my own recipe.
After letting the dough rise a bit, you fill it with a mixture of sugar, cinnamon, and nuts and then fry them them up.
The insides get all gooey and delicious.
David approved. I don't think I'll be able to eat hotteok without instantly being transported back to a cold winter day in Seoul. Oh, the memories.

Our New Year's was topped off by the first real snowfall of the year. The world is beautiful and wonderful all covered in snow. Hope you all had a wonderful New Year!


Here in the Malone household, we say "Lunar New Year" instead of "Chinese New Year" in deference to all those other Asians who are not, in fact, Chinese. :)