A Family Dinner in Seoul

I've been meaning to post about this casual summer dinner my family had in Seoul. I've just been so busy that everything has fallen by the wayside. 

It's the rare moment that my mother and I get the opportunity to travel to Seoul and sup with our extended family, so it was a really joyful occasion, but we wanted to keep it casual on this day. 

My uncles and aunts, the cousins and my mother and me, we all gathered at my cousins' Seoul apartment for a casual dinner. 

Greens ready for ssam

My favorite part of most simple Korean meals is the ssam. Ssam is the tradition of wrapping ingredients in an edible wrapper to keep it all together, typically greens. I love taking perilla, romaine, water dropwort (minari), mugwort (ssuk) and whatever other greens I can get my hands on (Stateside, I often add in cilantro or even Italian herbs), and wrapping rice and ssamjang, doenjang or gochujang in those fragrant leaves.

You can layer, or pick whichever greens and inserts you want. Many people like a small piece of meat in their ssam, but I prefer mine pure and vegetal. I want to taste all the greens, pungent and intense.

You can see that I've placed myself right in front of the ssam.

When all the aunties and my mum were done cooking, we had a great spread that was considered fairly modest for our family, since we love to eat big.

You might think it's funny to see bare feet near the dinner table. We were sitting on the ground, as you often do in Korea, and of course we had taken our shoes off because that's how we do. There were two tables full of family in the end, loaded down with ssam, salads, fried jeon pancakes, japchae noodles, gochu peppers, kimchi and one last favorite thing of mine.

I've eaten this way for most of my life, and have missed it since moving away from my family.

Dduk. I have a slight obsession with these Korean rice cakes, which I purchase at every available opportunity. Whether they're songpyeon, which can be filled with chestnut, red bean or sesame-honey paste, or injeolmi, which are coated in a variety of ingredients, from adzuki bean powder to soybean powder, I'm slightly obsessed with the wide variety of textures, ingredients, shapes and formats of dduk (sometimes spelled tteok).

Dduk: an essential part of my life, I think of it a bit like pasta in its diversity of shapes.

Few things, to me, are so comforting, filling and fun. I've only ever made songpyeon, so I'm looking forward to experimenting with making my own dduk and showing you the results. If you're in a Korean grocery store, make sure you ask for some. Don't expect it to be like a supersweet dessert, but somewhere in between bread and rice, and you might just find yourself craving it again.