This week I feel like I had a major success! I made ddukguk (rice cake soup) which is one of my favorite Korean soups, and I think it turned out pretty well. The only time my mom had to help me was when she had to tell me the next step, but after that I kind of figured it out on my own. I also added my own twist to it by adding some other ingredients, but let's start from the beginning.

Ddukguk is a traditional Korean dish eaten during the celebration of the Korean New Year. It is tradition to eat this dish on New Year's because we believe it gives good luck and makes you a year older. You CANNOT become a year older until you eat this, and this is the only time you gain a year so your age doesn't become doubled.

The ingredients I started with were some peeled anchovies, dried kelp (which is larger and thicker than seaweed), two eggs, and a lot of rice cakes. Looking around the kitchen, I found some other leftover ingredients I thought would integrate well with the soup, which were chicken, soy sauce, and fish sauce. 









I got a large pot of water boiling and put the kelp along with the anchovies in there. These ingredients aren't meant to stay in the soup if you don't want, so I just let them sit in the water with the soy sauce and fish sauce and took them out about 20 minutes later. While that was going, I got the chicken pieces and started separating them into smaller strands so that they would heat evenly in the water. After the broth was ready and the soup ingredients were prepped, they were ready to get dumped into the pot. 

On another part of the stove, I got a pan ready to cook the eggs (uh oh). Eggs are supposed to be cooked separately from the soup because of the presentation of the dish. The broth tastes a little richer when the egg is just thrown into the water and mixed around, but it doesn't look appealing at all. LUCKILY, I didn't burn the eggs this time and got them cut into nice little strands. Seaweed and scallions are also cut into strands to put on top of the soup.



When the soup was finished, we poured it into three bowls and put the toppings on. It actually looked really nice, and I might even go as far to say that it would be comparable to a restaurant's!

Anthony wondering why he's so naturally talented

A lot of the time I'm spending in the kitchen is actually getting organized and cleaning up. I'd say the effort I'm putting into cleaning and cooking is 50/50. Every couple of minutes, I realized that there were so many things I had to throw out like scallion heads, egg shells, anchovy peels, chicken fat, and it just all kind of became overwhelming. I wish I had a picture of it but I guess I panicked in the moment and cleaned it all up as fast as I could. So word of advice when you're cooking, try to keep a trash can near you or check to see if there is trash because you don't want to be cleaning that all up at the end. You can have a picture of the dishes I had to do though:

Me complaining about the small amount of dishes