Making soup

1. Select a soup and tell us why you chose this soup. Is there a story behind it?

For the second blog submission, I decided to make rice cake soup(Korean traditional soup for new year celebration). Historically and traditionally, we ate the soup for a new year celebration from generation to generation. When we eat the soup, it gives us a sense of celebration.

2. Provide a recipe for the soup, following the guidelines discussed in week2.

1. Put the rice cakes into a bowl of water and let them rest in water for 10mins

2. Make soup base

- Put beef brisket in a pot with other ingredients such as dried fish, spring onions, onions, carrot, garlic

- When the brisket gets nice and tender, drain the soup and keep it

3. Rip the brisket into small pieces and season with sesame oil, sesame seed, soy sauce and a bit of spring onion. Mix it all together.

4. Put the rice cake in the base soup, bring it to a boil, then put the brisket pieces and some spring onions.

5. Plating in a bowl with some sea weed and fried egg as garnish.

Simple recipe but it's just delicious!

3. Have someone else try it. What did they think?

I had this dish with some my Korean friends, and they loved it. It was for the new year celebration, perfectly cooked in a traditional way, so what else do we need more?

5. Answer and Discuss the following questions "What were the challenges involved? Was it a success? What would you do differently?"

For the cooking brisket, it takes long time so I would rather make it in a faster way next time. So in order to make the soup faster, I would saute beef cuts in a pan or a pot then pour water into the pot which could speed up making the base soup process than the traditional version.

6. Reflect on your experience. What did you take away from this experience? Did you learn something? How can you apply this to your future culinary endeavors? I've learnt that it is good to change the traditional recipe in order to reinterpret in my version.

Through the process, I could sense my creativity and evolution. It helped me realize that cooks should have critical thinking in order to evolve ourselves.