Born in Tokyo, Japan, I lived in Saitama Prefecture for quite some time before I came over to Korea a couple of years ago. Korea is exciting; I love tasting delicious food, and Korea has plenty to offer. Recently I fell in love with traditional Korean rice cake (tteok in Korean). I tasted some and learned how to make them at Damdaheon in Uijeongbu City, Gyeonggi Province. They are quite different from traditional Japanese rice cakes, which are called ‘mochi’ or Japanese cookies.

This story is about an excursion recently undertaken by Nakayama Hiromi, a Japanese national, in order to sample some traditional Korean rice cake and learn how to make it.

Park Gyeong-ae, a craft master of traditional Korean rice cake, whom I met at Damdaheon
Craft master Park Gyeong-ae gave me a warm welcome upon my arrival at Damdaheon in Sangok-dong, Uijeongbu City, Gyeonggi Province. As a crafts master specially designated by the province in the field of traditional Korean rice-cake making, she manages this place and a Korean style mill – which grinds grain and rolls out some basic traditional Korean rice cakes – that her family has run for decades. Her cheerful laughter made me feel at home.

The venue was big and tidy. I saw some very low, colorful chairs in a corner. Master Park said that they were for parties of children from kindergartens and primary schools. Field trips to this place are said to be very popular among children, too. There was a board on the wall covered with pictures in an amazing diversity of colors and shapes of traditional Korean rice cake. It was as if one could guess the beauty of Korea just by looking at the colorful pictures of tteok. Well, I was a bit nervous because I was supposed to make Korean some rice cake. I thought that making it would be much more complicated and difficult than making bread or pastries.

“It’s not difficult at all, as you will see. Few dishes are easier to make than traditional Korean rice cake,” said Ms. Park. With her encouragement, I mustered up what courage I had.

Tteok: Made only with natural ingredients

Well, the ingredients needed to make tteok are incredibly simple: rice flour, water, sugar and salt. That’s all. an use some side ingredients if you want to create special colors or tastes. In fact, dozens or even hundreds of different natural ingredients can be used to make rice cake.

Flour of cactus, barley shoots, and pumpkin and gardenia seeds had been prepared for the day. Their colors were terrific. Unlike bread or cookies, which need baking powder or butter, tteok does not require any artificial or unhealthy ingredients. Moreover, tteok, except for some very rare commerce-driven cases, does not need any additives or preservatives. It lasts only for a day, so it’s very difficult to ship overseas. Tteok, when made with additives or preservatives, loses its unique taste and value according to Ms. Park,
After tasting some tteok, it seemed to me that Korean rice cake, unlike Japanese cookies, which look more beautiful and taste delicate, tastes thicker and more bounteous.

According to Ms. Park, making tteok implies sharing. The reason is that, to make tteok, you need a large amount of rice, at least one ‘mal’ (a Korean unit of measure equivalent to about 18 liters), and therefore ought to share the cake with your neighbors. So tteok means love, she concluded.
Her interpretation was quite impressive. Make some tteok and share it with your neighbors! I felt once again the traditional Korean value of caring for one’s neighbors deep from the heart.

Making tteok is easy and interesting

The day’s mission consisted of making some ‘tteok’. To make any kind of tteok, you first need to soak rice in water for about an hour, and then grind it in a machine to make rice flour. Fortunately, the rice flour was ready for me. First, I had to choose a side ingredient, so I chose cactus flour to get a purple color. As the color of the cactus and flour combination changes a little after cooking the tteok, Ms. Park recommended adding some strawberry flour to make the color more beautiful.

I hand-mixed the side ingredient with rice flour slowly so that the two ingredients were well blended. I thought that children would love doing this because the flour felt so smooth on my hands. Then I added just a little of water, and, using a screen, filtered the flour a few times.

The reason for doing this was to incorporate air between the flour particles because no baking powder would be used. So, the more you filter the flour, the softer your rice cake will be. Next, I added some sugar and salt before pouring the flour into a steamer. Then I was told to place a tteok cake mold over the flour and then press it softly down. It was interesting to observe that the flour inside the mold maintained the cake instead of being mixed with the flour outside the mold. Now, the last step was to steam it.

In about ten minutes, a delicious smell emanated from the steamer and I could confirm that it was colored beautifully. The cake looked terrific in the shape I chose. I added some pieces of pounded rice cake in a variety of colors and shapes like flowers, stars and a heart on top of the cake. I finished making my own rice cake. Making it was easier than I thought. I could make it by myself at home, I thought. I agreed with the master’s conclusion: “Many people think that making tteok at home would be difficult. That’s not true. Of course, there are some difficult kinds of tteok to make. However, generally, anybody can make tteok at home as long as they are familiar with the basic recipe. Furthermore, they can leverage their creativity to make a variety of traditional rice cake.”

Yes, I totally agreed with her. In addition, from my own experience, I could tell that the field trip would be very good for the emotional development of children because making rice cake involves a lot of contact with ingredients that are pleasing to the touch. Tteok is delicious and healthy and comes in beautiful colors and shapes. I think traditional Korean rice cake certainly has the potential to become a very popular global food in the future.
I am eager to make it at home and serve it to my parents in Japan soon.

Travel Tips

‘Damdaheon’ in Korean literally means “a place that offers lots of things to enjoy and learn” (‘dam’ means ‘to enjoy’, ‘da’ means ‘plentiful’, and ‘heon’ means ‘a place’). Reservations are required for field trips. At Damdaheon, traditional Korean cake is made of rice cultivated in the province – Gyeonggi rice is famous for its superior quality in Korea – and local natural ingredients. There is also an expert course for those interested in opening a place of their own. Besides tteok making, the place offers other hands-on experience programs to make the following foods: sweet red-bean jelly, pattern-pressed candy (made of sesame seeds, chestnuts, green pea flour, honey, and more), tofu, fermented soybeans (used to make soybean sauce and soybean paste), soy sauce, soy bean sauce and kimchi. In addition, the place offers weekend farms on the basis of an annual lease contract.

Written by: Nakayama Hiromi & Chang Jeong-hyun
Photographed by: Lee Yeom-gyu

Damdaheon
Add: 575-3 Sangok-dong, Uijeongbu City, Gyeonggi Province
Tel.: 031-848-8523
Homepage: http://cafe.naver.com/damdaheon

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