Chusok & Songphyon
Chusok, or harvest moon festival, is a popular folk holiday falling on the 15th of the eighth month by the lunar calendar.
From old days the Korean people celebrated the day to commemorate the bumper harvest and to honour their ancestors.
That day people offered to their ancestors foods prepared with early rice and other grains such as mung bean, adzuki bean and soy bean.
And on the eve of the holiday, they prepared holiday dishes, typically rice cakes made of newly harvested crops, soups, wine and sweets.
They made a variety of rice cakes including glutinuous rice cake, and the one most associated with the holiday is songphyon, half-moon-shaped rice cake stuffed with beans and cooked on a layer of pine needles.
From old days the Korean people celebrated the day to commemorate the bumper harvest and to honour their ancestors.
That day people offered to their ancestors foods prepared with early rice and other grains such as mung bean, adzuki bean and soy bean.
And on the eve of the holiday, they prepared holiday dishes, typically rice cakes made of newly harvested crops, soups, wine and sweets.
They made a variety of rice cakes including glutinuous rice cake, and the one most associated with the holiday is songphyon, half-moon-shaped rice cake stuffed with beans and cooked on a layer of pine needles.
Nochi
Nochi (fermented glutinous rice pancake) was a special dish for holidays in Phyongan and Hwanghae provinces.
The locals in Pyongyang specially liked to take the dish on Harvest Moon Day, a Korean folk holiday.
Under the moonlight on the eve of the folk holiday they fried the pancakes in the courtyard, put them one by one in an earthenware pot and sealed it. Next evening, all family members, young and old, enjoyed the rising full moon, taking the skewered pancakes.
Some families kept the pancakes in store and consumed them during the busy harvest time in order to take in sugar.
