Kat Po Kee

Ttok po kee is a dish served on the streets in Korea, and it's one of my favorite foods of all time. It cost around $2 to eat, and you would always look for the stalls with swarms of people waiting for the women working there to finish cooking. If they were crowded you knew it was good. It's a dish made with rice cake pasta, fish cake, veggies in a sweet yet spicy sauce. Once I was walking home from work and I was so hungry for it I stopped to eat it during a windstorm from a typhoon. I was almost done when an old man pulled me from the stand. I was annoyed, but a few seconds later a giant metal sign crashed into the stool I had been sitting upon. Risking my life for a good dish of ttappokee was just one of the rewards of living in Korea.

My version is pretty close but I add a lot of vegetables. Some people add 1/2 a package of ramen, but instead I use some Asian pasta such as udon or rice noodles.

Ingredients:

2/3 cup Japanese fish cake, sliced *
2/3 cup Ttok (Korean rice cake) **
1/2 cup dry udon or Asian noodles
1 tbs bonito fish soup flavoring (or veg soup base)
2 tbs splenda for baking
2 tsp Korean red pepper paste (gochu jang) ***
1 tbp cornstarch
1/2 tsp salt
1 small onion, chopped
1 clove garlic, chopped
2/3 cup vegetables (frozen corn, peas, california medley, or chopped cabbage all work well)
Sesame seeds (optional)

* Japanese fishcake is usually found in the freezer section, using frozen is fine. Sometimes you can find fishcake freshly made. It looks like this, and is called oden in Japanese and odang in Korean. If you are veg you can leave it out or use sliced tempeh.

** Ttok is Korean rice cake pasta, found in the refrigerated section of the market. You want to buy the type that is plain and unsweetened. It comes in long cylindrical or oval shapes. The oval shaped ttok looks like this. If it's brown it's made with unbleached rice powder and is best.

*** I had a friend who made this dish for her children but without red pepper paste since she didn't want to make it spicy. Instead she would use 3-4 tbsp of soy sauce.

Directions:

Spray pan with cooking spray and fry onions and garlic, then add the sliced fishcake and fry for a few minutes. Add water to the dish, around 3 cups. Separate the ricecakes and throw them into the boiling water one by one. Add the vegetables, soup flavor, splenda, and the noodles. Cook until the rice cakes and noodles are soft.

Add additional water if needed, this is not a soup but should have the consistency of stew. Add 1 tsp of red pepper paste. Taste it to see if it's hot enough, if you'd like more heat add the other tsp of red pepper paste. If the dish is too watery, mix 1 tbsp of cornstarch with a small amount of water and slowly pour it into the dish while stirring. Pour into bowls and garnish with a sprinkle of sesame seeds.