This summer, my office relocated to a different part of our city. We are now across the street from an Asian supermarket. I have started exploring it, and I recently bought a tteokbokki kit—it came with a portion of rice cakes and a sauce powder packet for making the traditional Korean sweet and spicy sauce. I made sure to read the ingredients carefully to make sure that it had no wheat gluten in it. (It did have wheat starch, but that is not an issue for me.)
The other day, I fried up some sausage, onions and zucchini, and then prepared the boiled rice cakes and sauce on the side, adding it all together when the rice cakes were cooked through. For this dish, I cut up two white onions and three zucchinis, keeping the pieces long. I added about 200 grams of sausage, cut in small pieces. I cooked the sausage and onions together first and then added the zucchini after the onions were soft. I cooked it all until I got some nice scorching on the vegetables. I made the sauce and boiled it and the rice cakes in a separate small saucepan, and then mixed it all together when the rice cakes were ready. The rice cake package was about 300 grams.
It was so delicious. Rice cakes are so delightfully chewy. They made a great contrast to the soft zucchini. I had more vegetables than rice cakes, which was lovely, and the sweet, spicy sauce coated it all. I had leftovers, and I promptly ate them for subsequent lunches and breakfasts.
What a find. I think my next version will feature seafood and lots of mozzarella…
A Flour By Any Other Name 