Dishes for Jongwoldaeborum
Festive dishes for the day include ogokpap, yakpap, pokssam, noodles, dried herb dishes, and ear-quickening liquor.
Ogokpap is the boiled rice mixed with four other cereals, typically foxtail millet, sorghum, bean and adzuki bean.
Yakpap, medicinal rice, is prepared with glutinous rice and honey as major ingredients, and also jujube, dried persimmon, chestnut, pine nuts, sesame oil and others.
Nine kinds of cooked dried herbs are good for not getting ill from the summer heat.
Koreans of old times favoured these dishes, because such balanced diet would help the intake of various nutrients for health promotion.
They ate noodles at lunch the day before, wishing that they would live as long as the noodle strips.
A cup of cold liquor is taken at breakfast on the folk holiday, and it is called ear-quickening liquor.
Ogokpap
Ogokpap is prepared with five cereals. It was also called ogokjappap.
Korea has a long history of cultivating five cereals.
Rice, foxtail millet, sorghum, millet and soybean were discovered in the Namgyong remains, and old records from the Three Kingdoms wrote that farming of five cereals reaped a bumper crop.
Those included in the five cereals varied by period and region.
According to Rimwonsipryukji, an old book, rice, foxtail millet, sorghum, millet and adzuki bean were numbered as five cereals. And Kyuhapchongso said five cereals included glutinous rice, foxtail millet, sorghum, soybean and adzuki bean, and Sejong Sillok rice, soybean, millet, barley and barnyard millet.
This means the five cereals include those widely cultivated in a certain period and region.
Along with the long history of cultivating five cereals, the Korean people had established a custom of preparing ogokpap long ago.
Tongguksesigi, a historical book, recorded that the custom of eating ogokpap on the First Full Moon Day had been handed down from long ago.
The custom was derived from the facts that people wanted to share the dish of cereals they had cultivated with each other and that the five cereals were very good for people’s health.
It also mirrored their wish for another bumper crop in the new year and five blessings (longevity, wealth, health, blessing of children and peaceful death).
It is another long-standing custom of preparing vegetable dishes together with ogokpap.
At present ogokpap has become a dish for everyday meal.
