An American woman makes songpyeon, a traditional Korean rice-cake, with her mother-in-law entirely in English. They measure rice flour, knead it into a squishy dough, shape and steam the pieces, then brush them with sesame oil. The finished cakes have a sweet, honey-like caramelized filling.
We have the rice flour here, and you pour a little bit of hot water in and mix little by little so that you get the right texture. It looks like the texture is quite squishy. "It's squishy." So now she is kneading the mixture. Now is the tricky part. It looks similar to making mandu. Wish me luck. Mmm, good! Now we're putting the songpyeon in the steamer. It expanded! We are brushing sesame oil on the songpyeon so that they don't stick to each other. Wow! It's really sweet, and the inside is almost like honey. The sugar caramelized.
