Note: The following is an essay from “Festive Maryland Recipes,” posted here with the original recipe from the community cookbook. “Festive Maryland Recipes” contains an adapted version of this recipe.
After the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 removed discriminatory barriers to moving to the United States, Maryland gained a new population of Korean-born citizens. Naturally, these newly-minted Marylanders brought their celebrations with them. In the 60s and 70s, newspapers began to report on the festivities. A 1970 Lunar New Year event held at the Korean embassy in Washington, D.C. attracted Korean-born Marylanders from around the state. Helen Giblo, a reporter from the Annapolis Capital, described for readers the galbi and “kimchie, a dish that is a way of life in the Land of Morning Calm.” Also served was “dduk guk,” Rice Cake Soup – a Korean New Year essential.
The Bethel Korean Presbyterian Church of Baltimore was founded in June of 1979, with a parish made up of seven families. “Everyone was on the same boat, sometimes literally,” Pastor Billy Park told the Baltimore Sun in 2002. By then, more than 1,700 people were attending Sunday services at the church.
The “Ladies of the Bethel” did not include a recipe for Rice Cake Soup in their 1986 eponymous cookbook. Perhaps the authors felt that the rice cakes were too difficult to acquire or to make. The recipes in the book often reflect the constraints of limited access to ingredients, and provide a contrast to today’s vicinity around the church (which moved to Ellicott City in 1987), an area now strewn with multiple international grocers such as H-Mart.
The book does contain many other traditional recipes, with the intention, as Susan Y. Park, the cookbook chairperson wrote, “to introduce as many Korean recipes as possible to those who are accustomed to Western food.”
Continue reading “Chop-Chae, Ladies of the Bethel”