Korean · Dessert
Songpyeon
- Advanced
- 50 min
- roughly 1 of 4 for cost
- Vegetarian
- Vegan
Leads with toasted, nutty warmth throughout, a sweet edge rounding the corners.
Ingredients
- 300 g fine dry-milled non-glutinous rice flour
- 5 g fine salt
- 200 ml to 220 ml boiling water
- 100 g toasted sesame seeds, coarsely ground with 1 g salt
- 50 g dark brown sugar
- 50 g red pine needles (Pinus densiflora) from an unsprayed tree, rinsed
- 10 ml toasted sesame oil
Equipment
Steamer
The skills inside
Steaming: basket, leaf and lid
Allergen screen
Found: gluten · sesame
Screened for: gluten, dairy, egg, nuts, peanuts, fish, shellfish, molluscs, soy, sesame, celery, mustard, lupin, alcohol. Not screened: sulphites.
Screened by keyword from the ingredient list, not reviewed by a person; check every label for what the list cannot show.
Method
- Sift the rice flour with the salt, then pour on the boiling water in three lots, stirring with a wooden spoon between each and holding back the last 20 ml, to be added only if the dough cracks. Knead for 5 minutes once it is cool enough to touch. 5 min
- Work the dough until it takes a fingerprint without cracking at the edge, then keep it under a damp cloth at all times; an exposed surface skins over in about two minutes and those dry flakes never rejoin.
- Mix the ground sesame with the brown sugar. Roll 20 g of dough into a ball, press a well with your thumb, load 6 g of filling, and seal the seam completely before pinching it into a half moon, squeezing out any trapped air that would burst the cake in the steamer.
- Line a steamer with the pine needles, set the cakes on them without touching, and steam over a full boil for 20 minutes, until they turn from chalk white to translucent. The needles perfume the cakes and are not eaten; lift them off before serving. Never substitute yew or an ornamental conifer, which are toxic. 20 min
- Drop them into cold water for 10 seconds, drain, and toss with the sesame oil.
How to tell it is going right
This dish has no standard of its own yet. It is judged on the technique it exercises: checked at the pan, while there is still something to be done about it.
Steaming: basket, leaf and lid 130 recipes
- Steam was running before the food went in: the water at a rolling boil and vapour coming steadily through the basket, rather than the whole thing warming up together.
- Nothing touches the water at any point: the food sits clear of it throughout, and the level neither drops enough to boil dry nor rises enough to wet it.
- The lid stayed on. Every lift costs the chamber its heat, and the number of lifts should be as close to none as the dish allows.
- Lifted out, the surface is glossy and plump with its colour heightened rather than dulled: greens brighter than they went in, not olive.
- Cooked through with the shape intact: it yields at the centre without having slumped or split, and there is no more than a spoonful of clean condensate beneath it.
Where it goes wrong The lid was loose or dripping and the condensate fell back onto the food, so it arrives waterlogged and pale with its seasoning washed down into the bottom of the dish.
At the Table
- The Pour
- Sauternes
- Also Right
- Demi-sec Champagne
- From the Taps
- Belgian tripel
- Zero-Proof
- Jasmine tea
The sweetness rule is absolute: the pour must be sweeter than the plate, and acid keeps it from cloying.
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