Today, I’m bringing tteokbokki to the new world, first stop in Mexico. Due to the labor-intensive nature of traditional Mexican mole sauces, I didn’t make this mole from scratch. The mole that Americans recognize is Mole Poblano.

Wikipedia says, “Mole poblano is prepared with dried chili peppers (commonly ancho, pasilla, mulato and chipotle), ground nuts and/or seeds (almonds, indigenous peanuts, and/or sesame seeds), spices, Mexican chocolate (cacao ground with sugar and cinnamon and occasionally nuts), salt, and a variety of other ingredients including charred avocado leaves, onions, and garlic. Dried seasonings such as ground oregano are also used. In order to provide a rich thickness to the sauce, bread crumbs or crackers are added to the mix.”

Before you start making the sauce, soak your Garae tteok in a hot water bath (not boiling water) for 10 minutes (check the instructions on the package of tteok you bought at the Korean grocery store for recommendations on this step). Dry them off.

Here are the ingredients

1 lb Garae tteok noodles (presoaked)
1/4 cup Mole Poblano paste
1 cup chicken stock
1 lb chicken thighs, diced
1 tbsp grapeseed oil
3 cloves garlic, minced
1/2 onion, diced
1 tbsp toasted sesame seeds for a garnish

Sautee the chicken thighs, garlic and onion in grapeseed oil until the chicken is about halfway cooked. Add the chicken stock and mole paste. Once the mole sauce has returned to a boil, put in the tteok and cook for an additional 5-7 minutes until the tteok is cooked.

Notice that the sauce has an appearance similar to Jjajangmyun (Korean Black Bean Paste Noodles). This recipe could make an interesting North American alternative for Jjajangmyun when “Black Day” comes around on April 14. Something to think about.

Tags: All Korean Food, Korean Recipes, recipe, tteokbokki

Posted by Tammy

Arrabiata sauce is an Italian pasta sauce. The word “arrabiata” literally means “angry sauce” and comes from the southern part of the Italian peninsula. This is the first Italian (and probably only) Italian sauce I’ve made that might make a Korean sweat (or want to blow their nose).

First, soak your garae tteok soak in a hot water bath (not boiling water) for 10 minutes (check the instructions on the package of tteok you bought at the Korean grocery store for recommendations on this step). While the garae tteok are soaking, start on your Arrabiata sauce.

Warning: Several of the recipes for Arrabiata sauce I read start off something like this: “Saute the gochugaru and red pepper flakes in about 3 tbsp. olive oil. Add garlic and saute until you start to smell garlic in your kitchen.” I’d say do this at your own risk. Unless you have a commercial kitchen with a heavy-duty fan, you will mace yourself and your family (and possibly set off your fire alarm) and that’s not a good first step unless you want your spouse, children and family pets to be very angry with you.

Here are the ingredients

1 lb garae tteok noodles (presoaked)
1 teaspoon Korean pepper powder (gochugaru) or hot paprika
1 teaspoon Italian red pepper flakes
3 tablespoons Olive oil
5 Cloves Garlic, minced
1 cup chopped onion
1/2 cup red wine (use a wine that you’d actually drink)
1 can (14 1/2 oz) chopped tomatoes
salt and pepper to taste

Start with approximately 3 tbsp. olive oil in your sauce pan. Add garlic and saute until you start to smell garlic in your kitchen. Add the onions and saute them until they are nearly translucent. At this point, add the gochugaru, Italian red pepper flakes and tomatoes. Cook for about 10 minutes. Serve it while it’s hot!

Tammy Quackenbush lives in San Francisco.  Her love of Korean food started when she taught ESL in Chuncheon, Gangwon-do back in 1996-1997. However, she didn’t become “famous” for her Korean cooking style until she started making cooking videos on YouTube as Koreanfornian Cooking two years ago (had to put her college degree to use somehow).  Her recipes (mostly in video form) have been featured on Slice/Seriouseats.com, Foodbuzz, Korea.net and iFoodTV.com.

Tags: All Korean Food, ddeokbokki, Korean Recipes, recipe, tteokbokki

Korma Curry Tteokbokki in my trusty cast iron skillet

Posted by Tammy

The Fourth Day of tteokbokki continues our culinary journey in India. Today’s inspiration is Korma Curry, which is a staple of North Indian Mughlai cuisine. The recipe for Korma curry goes back to the 16th century, when Persia’s Mughal Empire controlled much of India.

This packs some decent heat, but Korma curry certainly has lots of flavor. The basic recipe comes from Sukhi’s.com, which is a San Francisco Bay area company that produces a popular line of Indian curry pastes and sauces.

1 lb Garae tteok noodles (soaked for about 10 minutes in hot water)
1 packet Sukhi’s Korma Curry Sauce
¼ cup whipping cream
¾ cup water

In saucepan, add Garae tteok, Sukhi’s Korma Curry Sauce, and water. Mix ingredients together well, and simmer on medium high heat. When tteok is cooked, stir in cream. Bring to boil. Serve hot.

Tammy Quackenbush lives in San Francisco.  Her love of Korean food started when she taught ESL in Chuncheon, Gangwon-do back in 1996-1997. However, she didn’t become “famous” for her Korean cooking style until she started making cooking videos on YouTube as Koreanfornian Cooking two years ago (had to put her college degree to use somehow).  Her recipes (mostly in video form) have been featured on Slice/Seriouseats.com, Foodbuzz, Korea.net and iFoodTV.com.

Tags: All Korean Food, ddeokbokki, Korean Recipes, recipe, tteokbokki

Posted by Grace Meng

There are a lot of hotteok recipes online.  Based on my blog stats, there are even more people looking for hotteok recipes.  It surprised me that a street food, a simple fried pancake stuffed with brown sugar and nuts, is so sought after.  And then I remembered what it tastes like.

My friend Diane and I agreed when we started working on our cookbook that we would focus on home cooking.  There were people who really wanted us to do a cookbook of Korean royal palace-style food, but we wanted to focus on the kind of food we like best: hearty, simple, and homey.

So where does something like hotteok (pronounced “hoe dduk”) fit in?  It’s not something Koreans generally make at home, though premade mixes are popular.  For all the food trends that come and go in Korea, hotteok has staying power.  The dough might change—one year, corn is in, another green tea—and the cooking contraptions change sometimes, too.  I’ve had hotteok that are practically deep-fried and hotteok that are airy, light shells around a thin film of sugar.  (They don’t taste as good as the greasy ones.)  But you can find it wherever young people are hanging out on the streets, even in the dead of winter, at rest stops all over the country, and even in chi-chi department store basement food courts.

I think this is why people outside of Korea are searching for the recipe online.  It might not be something you eat at home, but it’s still intensely familiar.  When it’s gone, there is a big hole in your life.  Like peanut butter for American expats in Europe, or Vegemite for Australians.

Having tried a couple of different recipes online, though, I have to say most of them are not quite right.  The biggest challenge is getting the perfect chewiness right.  It may be hard for you to find glutinous rice flour (also called sweet rice flour), but if the recipe you’re looking at only uses regular all-purpose wheat flour, you are going to wonder how these hockey pucks are supposed to resemble hotteok.  Gluten develops through kneading, and that can make an all-flour dough chewy to a certain extent, the way certain pizza doughs are chewy.  But hotteok aren’t tough-chewy, they’re tender-chewy, like Japanese mochi, Korean tteok, and other foods made with, you guessed it, glutinous rice flour.

The problem, though, is a recipe with a lot of glutinous rice flour is going to be ridiculously sticky.  I found one recipe that made a really wet, spongy dough, very similar to the dough from the mixes, and this one certainly resulted in a chewier pancake, but the dough was so sticky, my hands looked like those of a monster from the deep.  I had to practically sling the dough, misshapen as it was, into the pan, since it wasn’t going to separate from me otherwise.

So the following recipe is my two cents in the discussion of how to make good hotteok at home.  The ratio of glutinous rice flour to wheat flour is almost 1:1, but I keep the liquids low enough that the dough is still manipulable.  As lazy as I am, I’ve found it’s worth it to finely chop the nuts in the filling.  Otherwise, they take up too much space and not enough brown sugar ends up in the pancake.  It’s not as super-crispy as the almost deep-fried hotteok I saw last winter in Seoul.  Instead, it’s chewy with a crust that’s still a bit like bread, and the look is more traditional, a golden-brown center ringed with a paler crust.  Knowing me, I’ll probably tinker with it some more before it gets published in the cookbook, but if you get a chance to try it, I’d love to hear what you think.

호떡

Sticky rice pancakes filled with brown sugar and nuts

Hotteok

Makes 8 small pancakes.

• ¼ cup lukewarm water
• 2 tablespoons sugar
• 1 teaspoon active-dry yeast
• 1 cup flour
• ¾ cup glutinous rice flour
• ½ teaspoon salt
• ½ cup milk
• 3 tablespoons canola or vegetable oil

• filling:
• ¼ cup brown sugar
• ½ teaspoon ground cinnamon
• 2 tablespoons finely chopped walnuts or peanuts

Stir together the lukewarm water, one tablespoon of sugar, and active-dry yeast in a small bowl until the sugar and yeast dissolve.  Let it sit for 10 minutes, during which time it will start to bubble and foam.

Combine the flour, glutinous rice flour, salt and remaining tablespoon of sugar in a large bowl.  Add the yeast-sugar mixture and the milk.

Using your hands, bring the dough together into a sticky ball.  Knead it a couple of times, for about two or three minutes.  The dough will be sticky, but it should still come off your hands and stay together.  Cover with plastic and place in a warm spot for 3 hours.  (I put mine on top of my heater.)

After 3 hours, the dough will have doubled in size.  It will look pretty puffy.  When you knead the dough, the dough will almost puncture and let out some air, but remain relatively airy and spongy.  Knead the dough a couple times until it becomes more elastic, but keep in mind that it will never become a smooth, elastic ball of dough.

Combine the sugar, cinnamon, and walnuts in a small bowl.

Heat the oil in a large pan on medium-high heat.  Make sure your pan is hot before you start — your pancake should sizzle when it hits the pan or it won’t form a good crisp crust.  Oil your hands and pinch off a piece of dough, about 2-3 tablespoons.  Knead it into a smooth ball and then stretch it out into a loose circle, creating a depression in the middle.  Fill the depression with the sugar mixture, about a tablespoon worth.  (Ignore how large the walnut pieces are in this photo — this was an earlier draft experiment.)  Stretch and seal the dough around the sugar mixture and flatten it between the palms of your hands.

Drop the flattened ball of dough into the pan.  The oil should be hot enough to sizzle.  Smooth some oil on your spatula and press down on the ball of dough, flattening it further.  Continue making balls of dough until the pan has 3 or 4 pancakes in it. Be careful not to crowd the pan.

Fry the pancakes until golden-brown, about 3 minutes on each side.  Remove from the pan and let them drain on a paper towels or a wire rack.  Serve warm.

Grace Meng is a nonprofit consultant and writer living in Brooklyn, NY.  She was an immigration lawyer until a few years ago, when she ran away to Mexico to learn how to make mole negro and started blogging at One Fork, One Spoon.  She is now writing a cookbook on Korean food with her good friend Diane Choo, which has given them the best excuse ever to take road trips around Korea eating all the way.

Tags: All Korean Food, Korean Recipes, Street Food

Madras Curry Tteokbokki

Posted by Tammy

My next source of tteokbokki fusion inspiration comes from the Indian state of Tamil Nadu. Madras, the capital of Tamil Nadu, which is now called Chennai, is located in the southwest corner of India. The region is well known for its spicy curry.

First, soak your Garae tteok in a hot water bath (not boiling water) for 10 minutes (check the instructions on the package of tteok you bought at the Korean grocery store for recommendations on this step).

2 tablespoons grapeseed or coconut oil
1 green pepper
1 red pepper
1 yellow pepper
4 cloves garlic (2 tsp minced)
1 large onion
14 oz. chopped tomatoes
3 tablespoons Madras curry paste (I used 1 packet of Sukhi’s Madras Curry paste)
handful of chopped cilantro
1 teaspoon lemon juice
3/4 cup chicken broth

First, finely slice the onion & peppers. Chop the cilantro as well, cutting off the stems.

Heat oil in wok (or cast iron skillet) over high heat. Stir-fry onions and garlic until lightly browned. Add peppers and stir fry for 2 more minutes.

Add curry paste, tomatoes, chicken broth and lemon juice. Simmer for about 10 minutes. Add the tteok and continue to simmer until the tteok are cooked (approximately 5 minutes). Put the cilantro in during the last minute of cooking.

This was the first sauce I made that I wish I had cooked up some plain white rice to use up the rest of the sauce. It was that good.

Tammy Quackenbush lives in San Francisco.  Her love of Korean food started when she taught ESL in Chuncheon, Gangwon-do back in 1996-1997. However, she didn’t become “famous” for my Korean cooking style until she started making cooking videos on YouTube as Koreanfornian Cooking two years ago (had to put her college degree to use somehow).  Her recipes (mostly in video form) have been featured on Slice/Seriouseats.com, Foodbuzz, Korea.net and iFoodTV.com.

Tags: All Korean Food, ddeokbokki, Korean Recipes, recipe, tteokbokki

Thai Green Curry Tteokbokki with Korean banchan.

Posted by Tammy

On the second day of my tteokbokki marathon, I decided I’d make you a recipe for Thai Green Curry Tteokbokki.

The Thai green curry sauce recipe here is slightly modified from one posted online by the BBC.

Remember with all tteokbokki recipes, you start by soaking your garae tteok (가래떡), which are the fat cylindrical rice noodles traditionally used in tteokbokki, in a hot-water bath — not boiling water — for about 10 minutes. Check the instructions on the package of tteok you bought at the Korean grocery store for recommendations on this step.

Thai Green Curry paste ingredients

While the tteok are soaking, start making your Thai green curry paste. Since I work from home, I made the paste during my lunch break and kept it in the fridge for a few hours.

4-6 medium green chillies, de-seeded and roughly chopped
2 shallots, roughly chopped
2 tsp ginger juice
2 garlic cloves, crushed
small bunch of fresh cilantro, stalks and roots attached if possible
2 lemongrass stalks, chopped (if unavailable, use 2 tbsp dried)
2 limes, grated zest and juice
1 tbsp ground coriander seeds
1 tsp ground cumin
1 tsp black peppercorns, crushed
2 tsp fish sauce or light soy sauce
3 tbsp olive oil

1. Place all of the ingredients in a food processor and blitz to a paste. Use straight away or store in a jar in the fridge for up to 3 weeks. This quantity is enough for a curry for 8 people.

One quick tip about putting the paste ingredients into the food processor or blender. The lighter items, like the liquids and spices go in first, the heavier items (like the chopped peppers and shallots) should go in last for optimum puree action.

After I got off work, I grabbed the green curry paste and started on part two of this recipe.

3 tbsp Thai green curry paste
1 lb tteok noodles (soaked for an hour in warm/hot water)
2 1/2 cups coconut milk
1 1/2 tbsp fish sauce
1 1/2 tsp palm sugar (or brown sugar)
1 tbsp grapeseed oil

Saute the green curry paste in oil over medium heat until fragrant, reduce the heat, gradually add 2 1/2 cups of the coconut milk a little at a time, stir until a film of green oil surfaces.

Add the fish sauce and palm sugar and let it heat until they are dissolved. Then add the tteok and continue to cook on medium high heat for about 5-10 minutes or until the tteok are soft and the broth has reduced and thickened slightly.

Serve with your favorite Korean side dishes (banchan). Mine includes Kimchi, Fried Seaweed Stems (미역줄기 볶음), Korean Spinach Side Dish (시금치 나물) and Mung Bean Sprout Side-dish (숙주 나물).

Tammy Quackenbush lives in San Francisco.  Her love of Korean food started when she taught ESL in Chuncheon, Gangwon-do back in 1996-1997. However, she didn’t become “famous” for her Korean cooking style until she started making cooking videos on YouTube as Koreanfornian Cooking two years ago (had to put her college degree to use somehow).  Her recipes (mostly in video form) have been featured on Slice/Seriouseats.com, Foodbuzz, Korea.net and iFoodTV.com.

Tags: All Korean Food, ddeokbokki, Korean Recipes, recipe, tteokbokki

Posted by Tammy

As we count down 12 days of tteokbokki recipes until the Korean New Year, let’s start with Korea’s neighbor, China, for some inspiration.

Szechuan is a province in southwestern China, known for fiery sauces. Here’s a Szechuan sauce recipe I found at CDKitchen. With a few modifications, this sauce will be the basis for my Szechuan tteokbokki (떡볶이) recipe.

s with all tteokbokki recipes, you start by soaking your garae tteok (가래떡), which are the fat cylindrical rice noodles traditionally used in tteokbokki, in a hot water bath (not boiling water) for 10 minutes (check the instructions on the package of tteok noodles you bought at the Korean grocery store or Asian supermarket for recommendations on this step).

Here are most of the ingredients

1 1/2 teaspoon sesame oil

1/4 teaspoon ground ginger

1/2 teaspoon minced garlic

1/2 cup chicken broth

1 1/2 teaspoon rice vinegar

1 tablespoon soy sauce

1 teaspoon hoisin sauce

1/4 teaspoon gochugaru powder (Korean red pepper powder)

1/4 teaspoon pepper

1/8 teaspoon five-spice powder

1 lb garae tteok noodles, soaked

The finished product: Szechuan Tteokbokki

Add the garlic and saute for a minute until the noodles are warm but not browned. Combine the remaining ingredients in a bowl and add the mixture to the saucepan. Bring to a simmer and cover for 10 minutes. Add the tteok and cook for about 5-10 minutes until the tteok are completely cooked. Serve hot.

Tammy Quackenbush lives in San Francisco.  Her love of Korean food started when she taught ESL in Chuncheon, Gangwon-do back in 1996-1997. However, she didn’t become “famous” for her Korean cooking style until she started making cooking videos on YouTube as Koreanfornian Cooking two years ago (had to put her college degree to use somehow).  Her recipes (mostly in video form) have been featured on Slice/Seriouseats.com, Foodbuzz, Korea.net and iFoodTV.com.

Tags: All Korean Food, ddeokbokki, Korean Recipes, recipe, tteokbokki

Posted by Tammy

I’ll be posting 12 tteokbokki recipes over the next 12 days leading up to the Korean Lunar New Year (Eum-nyeok Seollal, 음 력 설날) in response to the South Korean government’s campaign to make the rice cake dish the linchpin in their international marketing strategy for Korean cuisine.

The government wants Korean cuisine and culture to be more greatly appreciated all over the world and chose tteokbokki as key to the public relations push. [See "Tteokbokki, topokki: Whatever you call it, it's good!"]

I wonder whether the governmental champions of Korean cuisine think that by making tteokbokki an international cuisine it will boost other Korean delicacies, such as Chosun royal cuisine, to international recognition.

Many in the Korean ex-pat blogosphere wonder why the Korean government would be pushing tteokbokki (or any other rice product) when current domestic production doesn’t meet current demand.

Tteok commonly found in most Korean grocery stores on this side of the Pacific (San Francisco Bay Area) is made in the U.S. with American rice. In other words, increasing domestic rice production is only part of the issue. Imagine tteokbokki as a tool of public relations and international diplomacy.

There’s a small snag though. Tteokbokki traditionally is a very, very spicy dish. Even some Koreans won’t eat it because it’s so spicy. That’s why the Korean government created an official government agency to create Korean-fusion tteokbokki recipes.

If the Korean government wants to send me a donation for inspiration kindled during my forthcoming 12 Days of Tteok, I wouldn’t mind. However, I’m doing this because of my love of Korean cuisine and the challenge of making 12 dishes in a row with the same ingredient.

When I pitched this project to Joe McPherson, my “boss” he asked, “You think you could pull them off?”

Peer into my refrigerator (right) and see that I’ve got the tteok stocked. I’ll blog; you decide.

The first thing I will do to help the South Korean government promote this dish is to not use their dumbed-down pronunciation of it. Some ex-pats and tourists in Korea consider it a little insulting that the Korean government thinks we’re too babo (바보, or dumb) to pick up the correct pronunciation.

Here’s a hint: Tteok is pronounced somewhere between dock and tock. The double-T of the transliteration is more like a held-D when spoken. The bogi part of the dish name is pronounced like bogey. So, tteokbogi is pronounced like dock bogey. See, that wasn’t so difficult.

Twelve different versions of tteokbokki (using sauces from different parts of Asia, Europe and North America) in 12 days can wreak havoc on anyone’s diet, so dine in moderation. Feasting with your eyes is calorie free.

Tammy Quackenbush lives in San Francisco.  Her love of Korean food started when she taught ESL in Chuncheon, Gangwon-do back in 1996-1997. However, she didn’t become “famous” for my Korean cooking style until she started making cooking videos on YouTube as Koreanfornian Cooking two years ago (had to put her college degree to use somehow).  Her recipes (mostly in video form) have been featured on Slice/Seriouseats.com, Foodbuzz, Korea.net and iFoodTV.com.

Tags: All Korean Food, Food, Korea, korean, Korean Recipes, recipe, tteokbokki

Posted by shinshine

For someone like me who is not a big fan of salads, bibimbap is a delicious way to eat lots of vegetables.  I can hardly eat a couple of raw spinach leaves, but I’ll take a half bunch of spinach that’s quick-blanched and seasoned lightly with sesame oil and soy sauce, a typical ingredient of bibimbap, in one sitting.  The ingredients are easily adjustable, so I make a point to pack in vegetables I haven’t had in a while.

My favorite has always been bibimbap in stone pot (돌솥비빔밥; dol sot bi bim bap).  The hot stone pot keeps the content sizzling when it arrives at the table.  A major plus for this version is that the cooking lingers on to toast the rice coated in sesame oil on the bottom.  After eating the rice and vegetables mixed with gochujang (고추장; Korean hot pepper paste), the crispy rice on the bottom is like a dessert before dessert, a highlight of my bibimbap experience that is savored to the end.

So – why not cut to the chase and get the vegetables and the crispy rice?

To make a crispy rice crust) I cooked sweet rice (찹쌀; chap ssal) to maximize the contrast of stickiness on top and crispiness on the bottom.  Regular short grain rice can be also used.  Then I coated a hot cast iron pan with sesame oil.  After reducing heat to very low, I spread a thin layer of rice on the pan.  Then I just checked for the color on the bottom and turned the rice crust once in a while to even out the golden color.  It takes anywhere from 30 minutes to an hour depending on the thickness and the color desired.

One way to cut this rice crust is to do it in about 10 minutes after spreading the rice on the pan, when the round shape has been set (meaning, the rice moves as one big piece when you gently shake the pan) and the bottom starts getting some color.  Cut with a dough scraper in 6 or 8 pieces.  This is when it’s easiest to get a clean cut, after the shape has been set but before the bottom crust has become too crunchy.

When the crust is done, place your toppings of bibimbap or anything else you’d like to create.  There are plenty of bibimbap recipes on the internet these days, which involve cooking short-grain rice, cutting and cooking (sautéeing or blanching to bring out the best color and taste of) various vegetables of your choice and finishing with a sunny-side up egg and gochujang.  I thinned out gochujang with vinegar and water so that I could drizzle it, along with the essential egg yolk, over the rice.  An after-thought was quail eggs on individual pieces to make everyone equally happy, if it is served at a get-togehter.

I was so focused on putting together my favorite parts of bibimbap, I only noticed the obvious visual similiarity to a thin crust pizza afterwards – which is another food I like.  As much as bibimbap has evolved to reflect seasonality and regional specialties and represents an aspect of Korean food – well-balanced, delicious, healthy meal – this crispy version of mine is probably reflecting a certain aspect of myself.

Shinshine grew up in Seoul and has been living in the U.S. roughly the latter half+ of her life.  She’s been living in New York since 2005.  Having switched careers from finance to food, she is now a full-time restaurant cook in New York City after culinary school in 2008.  Recently she started her food diary, www.shinshine.com, which is about three things in life she enjoys the most – food, Korea and New York

Tags: All Korean Food, bibimbap, korean foods, Korean Recipes, korean recipes, recipe, Recipes