Jeungpyeon 증편

Hey guys, I have exams in two weeks so this might be my last post for a while, but we will see how I go.

I recently came across a very cute looking dish, the name of it is Jeungpyeon.

Jeungpyeon 증편 is a type of rice cake made by kneading rice powder with milky rice wine, garnishing it with jujubes, chestnuts, pine nuts and stone mushrooms, and then steaming it in a cake mold. Jeungpyeon is a good rice cake for the summer because it is fermented with wine, and does not spoil easily. It has a unique wine aroma, slightly sour taste and soft texture.

Jeungpyeon is a variety of tteok (Korean rice cake), made by steaming balls of fermented dough made from rice flour and rice wine such as makkeolli. It is one of the varieties of tteok that is typically served during the summer, because its sweet and sour taste is believed to be refreshing in hot weather, as well as to aid in digestion. While it is not certain that when people began to eat jeungpyeon, but there has been songhwa (상화), a similar tteok made by fermentation since the Goryeo period.

It is not that hard to make, and compared to Songpyeon much simpler. IF you make it right it looks really pretty, almost too pretty to eat. But it is said to be good for you, so it is not a bad thing to try when you have time.

Anyways, to get started...

Ingredients
- 250 g non-glutinous rice powder
3 g (¼ tbsp) salt
- 50 g (¼ cups) milky rice wine
- 100 g (½ cups) tepid water (40 ℃)
- 5 g fresh yeast
- 40 g (¼ cups) sugar
- 2 ㎏ (10 cups) rice wine cake steaming water
- garnish
8 g (2 ea) jujube
1g stone mushrooms1.7 g (½ tsp) pine nuts
1 g pumpkin seed
- coloring
yellow
7.5 g (½ tbsp) water
2 g (1 ea) gardenia
pink color7.5 g (½ tbsp) water
3 g strawberry powder
- 13 g (1 tbsp) edible oil

Preparations
1. Sprinkle salt over the rice powder and sieve through fine mesh two times. Add milky rice wine, tepid water, fresh yeast and sugar to the rice powder. Mix them with wooden scoop thoroughly. Place it in a container, cover with poly-vinyl film, electrical thermo-floor and thick blanket. Maintain the temperature within 40~45 ℃.

2. Ferment it for 2 hours. When the dough swells up, stir it strongly and draw the air out. Ferment it again for another 1 hour (470 g).

3. Wipe the jujube with damp cotton cloths, cut the flesh round, make it into flower shape. Soak stone mushrooms in water for 1 hour, wash it by rubbing, wipe water with cotton cloths, roll it up, and shred it into 0.1 cm-thick.

4. Remove tops of the pine nuts, wipe the nuts with dry cotton cloths. Halve it lengthwise to make scale-like pine nuts. Wipe the pumpkin seeds with dry cotton cloths.

5. Halve the gardenia, soak it in water for 1 hour for yellow color. Dissolve the strawberry powder in water for pink color.

Method
1. When the 2nd fermentation completed, divide the dough into 3 parts. Leave one part for white, and color one part of the dough with 1.5 g of gardenia water in yellow, the other part with 2 g of strawberry water in pink.

2. Put the dough in the cake mold. Garnish with jujube, mushrooms, pine nut and pumpkin seeds (18 ea).

3. Pour water into the steaming pot, heat it up for 9 min. on high heat. When it is steaming, turn off the heat, put the cake mold in the pot. Let it sit there for 10 min. for third fermentation(water temperature 83 ℃). When the dough swells up again, steam it for 20 min. on high heat, another 10 min. on low heat.

5. When it gives off steam, take out the cakes and coat with edible oil.

And there you have it, pretty jeungpyeon to eat during the summer..or really just whenever you want.

Anyways, as I said before it is really pretty if you make it right.

And this is it from me today, I'll try my best to keep on blogging when I have exams, but I really should be putting my all into these exams. After all they all count towards whether I get into a good University of not.

Bye, stay warm, be healthy and enjoy your food!!