Tteokbokki, Sundae, and Fish Cake Skewers. The Big Three of Korean Street Food.
Tteokbokki, Sundae, and Fish Cake Skewers. The Big Three of Korean Street Food.
Tteokbokki.
A dish where the spicy, sweet-and-savory sauce, the chewy bite of the rice cakes, and the fish cakes soaked through with seasoning all come together in perfect, fantastic harmony.
That bliss when you first bite into the chewy rice cake and its coating of sauce—there's nothing quite like it.
From the bunsik joints in front of schools to the tarp-covered snack carts by the subway, from the instant pot tteokbokki bubbling away in a small pan to the pan-fried oil tteokbokki.
Before mala tang was a thing, this was every schoolgirl's soul food, and it still commands just as much love today. So of course it was the centerpiece of this morning's menu.
'A dish that's incomplete without MSG.'
And tteokbokki's absolute best friend, the classic one-two punch in any bunsik joint, was obviously sundae.
Place freshly steamed sundae, briskly chopped into segments, onto the same plate as those rice cakes steeped in red sauce—and the dish is already a complete culinary statement before you even pick up a skewer.
'Pair that with a bowl of long-simmered fish cake broth on the side, and you've got a masterpiece.'
Hoo.
My mouth's watering just imagining it.
Today's plan was to debut a bunsik set.
Tteokbokki, sundae, and fish cake skewers, all together.
When done right, no combo meal could be more perfect.
To that end, first we washed the Pog intestines until they were spotless.
Andrea had already done a preliminary cleaning with the slaughterhouse owner right at the source, but you could never be too sure—a second pass was still essential.
"Do you have any idea how hard that was? While you were back here lapping up the profits, Boss, I was out there suffering for this."
That's why I'd given her a short break while the rest of us worked, but she just kept going, fussing at my side nonstop.
"Ahem! B-but if you'd be so kind as to teach me your hunting method properly on my next day off, I suppose I could find it in my heart to forgive you...."
I breezed past her ulterior-motive grumbling and finished washing the offal we'd need for the sundae until it was beyond any doubt clean.
"Andrea, dice the vegetables for the sundae filling nice and small."
"Yes, got it!"
Andrea took up a position at the cutting board with carrots, onions, and green onions.
"Bldi, grab the minced garlic and give that ground meat a quick stir-fry."
"Yes."
"Riman, please measure out the MSG and black pepper exactly as I've written here and set them aside."
"Understood."
While we sorted the intestines, I opened the steamer where I'd already steamed the short-grain and glutinous rice.
Moist vapor billowed out and filled the air.
A gentle warmth spread through the kitchen, and just like that, my mood lifted for no reason in particular.
"Smells good."
Standard bunsik-shop sundae is typically stuffed with glass noodles, but for this batch I was subbing in short-grain and glutinous rice instead.
Because we couldn't use glass noodles even if we wanted to.
We'd lose that distinctive springy-chewy bounce, but rice-stuffed sundae has a depth of flavor that glass noodles could never produce.
How should I put it?
It tastes more expensive. That feels like the right way to say it.
"All done."
"Th-the preparations are complete."
Andrea brought me the finely diced vegetables.
Bldi's pan-seared ground meat had rendered out so much fat that it was practically shallow-fried in its own grease by the time it was done.
Riman likewise presented me with the dry mix, the MSG, salt, and pepper blended together in the ratios I'd written out.
I tossed it all together with the rice I'd steamed.
It was a substantial amount to mix by hand, but for a knight with seven years of cookhouse experience, this was nothing.
Did you know the galley has its own shovel, made just for the kitchen?
Flip the enormous heap of ingredients over and over with that giant shovel, and before you know it—voilà.
A perfectly uniform filling.
I stirred in the Seonji blood I'd prepared ahead of time and the minced garlic, and the crimson sundae stuffing was complete.
"Meat seasoned with blood... You're sure this is going to be all right?"
Riman, who had the least Knight Restaurant experience among us, asked me with clear unease in his voice.
"Riman, have faith. The boss's touch makes everything taste good, no matter what."
"I, I believe the master can make it work...."
Bldi started strong, then let her voice trail away at the end—contrasted with Andrea, who voiced her boundless confidence without a second's hesitation.
Buoyed by their support, I stuffed the Pog casings tight with the filling.
To banish any gamey odor from the finished sundae, I set it to boil with ginger, soju, and bay leaves.
Bubble-bubble-bubble.
Right beside the sundae, the offal that had already been through an initial blanch and a second soak was simmering away in the same pot.
Some might call it pork funk, others might call it meat flavor—either way, the aroma was starting to drift through the kitchen in heavy waves.
I checked the fish cakes simmering in their broth, a stock made from radish, dried anchovies, and kelp.
When I'd settled on sundae for today's menu, I'd made these fish cakes from scratch the day before.
Finely minced white fish, shrimp meat, a little flour, minced onion and carrot, Coco egg, chili powder, plus sugar, salt, and MSG—blended together and fried not once, but twice.
There were long rod-shaped fried fish cakes, rectangular ones, and skewers loaded with several small round egg-shaped ones.
A whole array of fish cakes were bubbling away vigorously in that broth.
Only one thing remained.
Tteokbokki.
Today, I planned to make it without wheat rice cakes, using only rice cakes made from rice flour instead.
Rice cakes and wheat cakes differ in everything—from their texture to how deeply they absorb the sauce.
Rice cakes: chewier, but the sauce doesn't fully penetrate, so you taste the texture of the tteok itself more purely.
Wheat cakes: softer, melt-in-your-mouth tender, but the sauce soaks right to the core, so the star of the show is the flavor of the sauce, not the tteok itself.
In my personal culinary doctrine, wheat cakes pair best with a thinner, soupier tteokbokki, while rice cakes belong with a thicker, more reduced sauce.
So today, since we were using rice cakes, I was going to let the sauce simmer down until it was nice and clingy.
I brought out the tteokbokki rice cakes and fish cakes I'd prepared even before the MSG had arrived.
The cakes I'd steamed the day before and then left to dry to just the right firmness—I gave them a quick rinse in water.
The fish cakes I cut into appropriate sizes, and the green onions I sliced into long, bold segments.
Thin diagonal slices would've worked fine, but I wanted to telegraph that there were green onions in this dish, so I deliberately cut them large.
With the green onion pieces chopped to roughly the length of two knuckles, I set them aside and poured water into a deep frying pan.
Ganjang, chili powder, gochujang, and sugar went in—each in a one-to-one-to-one ratio.
I'd pre-measured each into half-cup portions.
The absolute heart of tteokbokki sauce is the gochujang.
The quality of your gochujang sets the ceiling for the entire dish.
Great gochujang makes great tteokbokki.
That was the foundational truth of any bunsik joint. MSG, of course, was a given—leaving that out would be a disservice.
I scooped about half a spoonful of MSG into the sauce.
Seasonings all in the water, I cranked the heat and brought it to a boil.
Simultaneously, in went the green onions and rice cakes.
The white rice cakes and green stalks slipped into the red sauce and began to bubble away.
Once the rice cakes were just beginning to soften, I added the fish cakes and let them boil together.
Bubble-bubble-bubble.
Right around when the tteokbokki hit its ideal doneness—
"The sundae and offal should be about done by now. Andrea, would you pull them out for me?"
"Sure."
"Bldi, give her a hand."
"...."
She'd answer. Probably.
"Then what should I do?"
"Riman, keep an eye on the fish cake broth and make sure it doesn't boil over."
"Oh, r-right."
In his current state, those dark circles carved so deep under his eyes, giving him anything even slightly complicated felt like a recipe for disaster.
The tteokbokki sauce had reduced down to a nice, clingy consistency, and the rice cakes' exteriors were glazed with a glossy red shine.
Right on cue, the fully cooked sundae and offal sat on the cutting board, wisps of steam curling upward, radiating their own presence into the room.
"Is it done?"
"Just needs to be sliced now. Grab those udon bowls, ladle out the fish cake skewers and some broth."
"Just that?"
"While you're at it, dish out the tteokbokki too."
"...You could just give me the full list at once, you know."
Andrea half-lidded her eyes and pursed her lips in a pout.
"As the most senior employee here, don't you think you're giving your boss a little too much lip?"
"Th-that wasn't lip, I was just—"
She flustered and flapped her hands, so I reached over and ruffled her hair.
"Eep! H-hey! Boss?"
"Why so jumpy?"
"I-it's just, you suddenly started petting my head...."
"Get moving and get this out to the table."
"Yes...."
Andrea gathered up the tteokbokki and fish cakes and headed out. The moment she was gone, Bldi crept over to me, fidgeting.
"What's up?"
"...."
"Hm?"
"C-could you, um, do that for me, t-too...."
"Pet your head?"
She answered by giving me a small nod.
At Bldi's sudden request, I gently passed my hand over hers instead.
"Snff-snff."
Each time I did, she'd lift her head just slightly, trying to sneak a surreptitious sniff at my hand. The whole thing reminded me of Veronia, the Wolf Clan beastkin who'd visited the shop a few weeks back.
'She'd probably hate it if I told a vampire she was acting like a beastkin, wouldn't she?'
Busying myself with that useless thought, I directed Bldi to grab the pickled radish from the refrigerator.
Once I'd shooed them both out, I finally set to slicing the sundae.
I pulled the sundae, still steaming hot, onto the board and sliced it into rounds about a finger-joint thick.
The blade cut through the sausage, revealing the dark interior packed dense with glutinous rice, vegetables, and ground meat.
Through all that darkness, the pale orange of the carrot glowed faintly—that was the key visual accent.
Lung, liver, spleen, and head meat.
All the sundae offal meats, sliced into bite-sized pieces, I stacked neatly onto a platter.
I also ground some sesame seeds into a salt mix—a dipping blend of sesame salt, chili powder, black pepper, and salt—and carried everything out to the table on a single tray.
Rice cake tteokbokki, sundae served alongside its assorted offal, and handmade fish cake skewers.
The Big Three of bunsik, all deployed across the tabletop.
Beside them stood their loyal aide-de-camp: pickled radish.
There was still one thing missing.
That missing element.
"What are these?"
"Toothpicks. When you don't have chopsticks, you use these to skewer and eat."
"And why, pray tell, would we need those here...."
"Because sundae and tteokbokki demand to be eaten this way."
I handed each of them a pair of toothpicks.
The palm-length toothpicks gleamed polished and pristine beside their side plates.
Perfect.
The Big Three, and their adjutant who guarded them.
And, poised to battle them all, the protagonist of this meal—the toothpick.
The knights' bunsik, most beloved of menus.
"Tteokbokki, sundae, and fish cake skewers."
"Offal meat... haha, I never imagined I'd one day be eating a dish like this."
A short first impression from Riman.
"That tune'll change once you taste it, you know."
"Is that so?"
Riman hesitated, a faint reservation about offal meat holding him back for just a beat. Bldi, however, reached her toothpick toward the sundae without an instant's hesitation.
"You can dip it in that house-made salt blend, or dunk it into the tteokbokki sauce."
"Th-thank you, I will."
She dipped a piece of the Seonji-laced sundae lightly into the salt and ate it.
"Hhhhhnnngh!!!"
The moment it hit her mouth, her eyes squeezed shut and she gave the tiniest quiver—the spitting image of a baby bird.
There we go.
Bldi, you, at least, I knew would get what this tastes like.
"Deliciouth...."
"Is—is it really that good?"
Riman asked, taken aback by the richness of her reaction.
Bldi didn't answer. Couldn't answer.
She'd glanced around briefly, then silently snagged another piece of sundae and eaten it.
That was her answer.
"She says it's delicious."
"Hoooh!"
At that, Riman speared a piece with his own toothpick and ate it.
"Well?"
"Ohhh... what is this flavor?"
Riman's eyes rounded.
And his verdict.
"The intense savory richness of the meat inside the casing, balanced by that clean finish—punctuated by the sudden pops of nuttiness from the glutinous rice, the crunch of the carrot, the satisfying chew of the casing itself! I thought anything made with blood would be intensely gamey, but it's not there at all?"
Andrea hijacked the commentary.
"...Ha, haha, it's—yes, it's tasty."
In the end, Riman summed it up with a subdued assessment.
"Try dipping one into the tteokbokki sauce next. Even better that way."
The three pairs of eyes contemplating the sundae and tteokbokki took on an entirely different gleam.
