Tubular rice cakes
An accidental food experiment: At the Korean store, I picked up what I thought were heat-and-eat tteokbokki kits. As it turned out, it was just the rice cakes, no sauce or seasoning provided. The picture of tteokbokki on the front said “serving suggestion only” in greyed-out 5-point font. What I thought was a sauce packet (dimly visible through the bag’s translucent surface) was a “do not eat” desiccant packet.
I didn’t discover this until I was in the middle of dinner prep, with water boiling on the hob, ready to put in the rice cakes. Oooops.
Part 1: Soupy topokki (circa 7/8)
I tried making my own soupy topokki following the recipe on the back of the bag. (This is another thing that should have tipped me off that it wasn’t a premade meal kit, but I thought it was just instructions for how to mix the stuff in the kit. A failure of reading comprehension.) I had gochujang paste and sugar, but not the other ingredients, but the water was already boiling and I was hungry so I just rolled with it. Predictably, the results were poor. I wound up throwing out most of the soup, though I did eat the rice cakes.
Part 2: Bootleg chee cheong fun (7/26)
I still had another bag of rice cakes. This time I decided to wing off and do my own thing entirely. (1) Boil rice cakes and drain. (2) Pan-fry with egg. (3) Add hoisin, gochujang, garlic powder, and a bit of soy. This was good enough I might buy more tubular rice cakes in future…though I’m still craving tteokbokki.