Harvest Festivals : Shine On, Harvest Food

Next week’s full moon inspires not only the Chinese moon festival but Korean Chusok, a harvest and thanksgiving celebration that runs Monday through Wednesday.

In Korea, it’s customary to honor the harvest with a farmer’s dance and parade. People return to their home towns, visit grave sites, don their finest clothing and make food offerings to ancestors.

Like the moon festival, Chusok has its own special pastries, called song-pyon. Korean bakeries in Los Angeles generally stuff these small, chewy rice cakes with sesame seeds and sugar. Sweet bean paste is another typical filling. In size, song-pyon are somewhere between a quail egg and a ping-pong ball.

The cakes come in three colors--natural white, pale pink and gray-green. The pink cakes are tinted with food color. The green hue is extracted from mugwort ( Artemisia asiatica ), a cousin of sagebrush known as suk in Korea. Bakeries here tint the dough with mugwort powder. Authentic song-pyon are steamed between layers of pine needles.

Korean women have long taken pride in their skill in shaping these delicate cakes. Today, it’s more convenient to buy them. Song-pyon are available in some Korean supermarkets, but the best sources are bakeries that specialize in rice cakes as they produce fresh song-pyon daily. For festive presentations, bakeries will stack dozens of the cakes in burnished octagonal wooden trays.

Song-pyon are most closely linked to Chusok, but other sweet cakes are popular too. Most Koreatown markets and some bakeries sell fried honey cookies called yak-kwa , either imported from Korea or made locally. Another popular dessert is yaksik, a steamed rice pudding embedded with the dried red date-like fruits known as jujubes, pine nuts and chestnuts. Made with glutinous rice, yaksik is tinted brown with soy sauce, sesame oil and brown sugar. Bottled caramel sauce manufactured in Korea is sometimes added to deepen the color.

YAKSIK (Korean Rice Pudding)

2 cups glutinous rice

1 1/2 cups brown sugar, packed

2 tablespoons sesame oil

2 tablespoons soy sauce

10 chestnuts, fresh or canned, halved

15 dried red dates (jujubes), halved and pitted

1/4 cup pine nuts

1 tablespoon bottled caramel sauce, optional

Pine nuts for decoration, optional

Rinse rice and soak 2 hours in pot of water to cover generously. Drain. Place in steamer container and steam over simmering water 25 minutes, or until rice is tender. Place hot rice in large bowl.

Add brown sugar, sesame oil, soy sauce, chestnuts, red dates, pine nuts and caramel sauce. Stir to mix well. Return rice mixture to steamer and steam over medium heat until rice is very tender and sticky, about 30 minutes. Turn into serving bowl and decorate with additional pine nuts. Serve warm or at room temperature. Makes 6 to 8 servings.

Each of 6 servings contains about:

549 calories; 357 mg sodium; 0 cholesterol; 8 grams fat; 114 grams carbohydrates; 7 grams protein; 0.61 gram fiber.

Note : Bottled caramel sauce, a coloring agent, is carried in Korean markets. Dried jujubes are available in Chinese and Korean markets. Ordinary dates or other dried fruit can be substituted.