Korean Red Bean Bread & other musings…

 

Flavours collect like memories.  They are powerful conjurors that dance on the lips and the tip of the tongue.  I am an amalgamation of everything I have ever eaten.  A stew.  A mélange. 

The plate is a time machine.  It is a portal.  A train ride.  A winding alley.  It can evoke a specific moment, a person, a gathering, or a celebration.  Time spent in a kitchen, whether alone or with loved ones are cherished moments where wooden spoons become sacred instruments, and my grandmother’s apron beyond precious.  Sometimes when I let my mind wander, I have to laugh because it seems like pages from a cookbook.  I have come to believe that a craving is something far more complex than just the desire for a specific food.

A simple bowl of hot pastina takes me back to Nonna’s kitchen: the sound of her gold lamé Daniel Green slippers clicking as my brother, cousin, and I ‘sbuffo’ the little stars across the table in a fit of laughter.

The first trip to Europe with a friend encapsulated in a doughnut oozing with violet jam eaten out of a brown paper bag on a side street in Krakow. (3 days in a row…)

When I think about spanakopita, I can only imagine a sunny  Sunday drunk on champagne with a gaggle of easter bonnet clad friends, hands dripping in butter as we took turns caressing  thin sheets of phyllo dough into place.

Gnocchi finds a 14 year old me in a dim grotto dining room somewhere in Florence, where heaping plates were brought out of a quiet kitchen by a round, rosy cheeked chef missing a finger.

Don’t get me started on special Christmas ravioli, Mom’s meatloaf (mine still doesn’t taste as good as hers), egg topped rice, hot dogs (more of a nightmare, actually), Chinese-style green beans (magical) … We could end up here for a while.

 

And now, after 2 years spent living in Korea, there is a whole new layer of flavour studded memories for me to savour…  So fresh they have barely had time to settle.  For starters, there is my love of sweet red bean paste.  Boiled, sweetened, mashed beans:  it just doesn’t seem like something that should rustle up such deep pangs of desire.  I hoard mochi like they are tiny treasures, and while in Korea I formed a disturbingly strong attachment to a specific bean paste studded delight: something that I endearingly refer to as swirly pat bbang.  It is the perfect hybrid of something distinctly Korean, yet straight out of my childhood. Beautiful little loaves of lightly sweetened bread,  with a thin swirl of that delicious beany delicacy snaking its way  through.  Like cinnamon toast- but different- and oh, so good.  It was made to be sliced an inch thick, toasted to a fine golden brown, and slathered with butter before carefully unraveling it bit by bit, for proper consumption.  Once a week I would hike down the tall, meandering, thigh burning hill that we lived on (25 minutes 1 way!) to the train station, hop on board for a 10 minute ride to the heart of downtown Dongducheon, and from there make a bee line for the tiny corner bakery for a loaf of that “swirly pat bbang”…

 

Korean Swirly Red Bean Bread (danpat bbang):
makes 1 loaf

I learned through the process of developing this recipe that the making of the bean paste is a very delicate matter, not to mention an art form!  My original recipe (created by combining a few different Korean recipes I had found) had far fewer steps and did not take into consideration how important it is to carefully treat the beans in order to  get a beautifully flavoured paste.  I kept thinking that it had something to do with the amount or type of sugar I was using, whether or not there should be some vanilla added…or some secret ingredient I just didn’t know about. It just seemed like my bean paste was lacking some subtle dimension of flavour that I felt should be there.  Well, it continued on like this through a few weeks of testing until I stumbled across the Japanese film Sweet Bean one morning.  Not only was it a gorgeous film… (a reminder that much of what brings happiness are the simple joys…)…it also inspired me to try a different approach for cooking sweet bean paste.  Slower, meditative, with more intention.  I did my research, this time reading all about the Japanese techniques. Seriously.  The difference was revelatory!  Watch the film, then make this bread!

I suggest doing this recipe as a two day project.  The bean paste can be made up to 5 days in advance, kept in a tightly sealed container in the refrigerator…just bring it up to room temperature before using.  If you have time to dedicate a long day in the kitchen and want to do it in all one shot, make the bean paste during the first rise for the bread.  

 

For the bean paste:

ingredients:
1c red (adzuki) beans
1/2 t baking soda
3/4 cup (150g) white granulated sugar
cheese cloth / or thin cotton dish towel
food mill or fine mesh sieve

1.  Soak your beans overnight.  Sort the beans a bit and remove any broken or deformed bits.
2. After your beans have soaked overnight, drain them into a colander and give them a quick cold water rinse.  Place them into a heavy bottomed pot, cover the beans with about a 1/2 inch water, add 1/2 teaspoon of baking soda, and bring to a simmer over medium-high heat.   Let the beans simmer for a couple minutes (the baking soda in the water will create a bunch of foam on top- this is ok), then carefully pour them back into the colander and rinse again with cold water.  A short rinse is ideal, as the rinsing time will also effect the final flavour.  Quick= more bean flavour, long= less.  Put the beans back into the pot, barely covering them with about a  1/2 inch of  cold water.
3. Bring the beans back to a simmer over medium heat.  Watch the beans carefully, do not let them reach a full rolling boil at any point during the cooking process as this will cause the skins to crack, and thus change the flavour of the final result.  Too much heat = cracked and broken beans= bitter bean paste. Gentle simmering and covering the beans with just enough water to keep them submerged will prevent the beans from ‘dancing’ too much and you will get a beautifully sweet paste.  Some beans will crack during the process (I have never successfully had a full pot of unbroken beans, and I have made a lot of bean paste at this point) but the goal is to have as few as possible do so…The difference in flavour when you cook your beans with the utmost care is substantial!   If you want to get super hard core about it, you can place a piece of parchment paper with a small slit cut into the middle on top of the surface of the beans.  Or if you happen to have an otoshibuta on hand, use that.  This will help keep them from moving around.  The water will evaporate during the cooking process, when this happens, add just enough hot water to keep them submerged. You may have to do this more than once.
4. Simmer for 60 minutes.  At this point, test a bean to see if it is nice and soft and can easily be squished between your fingers. If not, let them simmer for 15- 30 minutes longer.   When the beans are ready, pour them slowly into a colander lined with cheesecloth or a clean, cotton dishtowel (like these) to drain.  After most of the water has drained on its own, gather the edges of the cloth and gently twist the little bundle to squeeze out more of the water.  (If you are using a cotton towel, most of the extra water will get absorbed.) When you can press your finger into to the side of the bean bundle, making a little well, and the well keeps its shape you have squeezed out enough water.
5. Put half of the beans back into the pot, add 3/4 cup of granulated sugar.  Cook over medium heat, using a back and forth motion with your spoon instead of a circular stirring motion to move the beans in the pot as the sugar dissolves. Once all of the sugar is dissolved, cook for 2 minutes, then add the remaining  beans.
6. Continue to simmer over medium/ medium-low heat for about 5 minutes, all the while gently and slowly shifting the beans back and forth in the pan being careful not to crush or burn them.  When you are able to draw a line in the bottom of the pan with your spoon and reveal the bottom for a brief moment, your paste is done! Remove from heat.
7. Place the bean paste in 4 little piles on a cookie tray to cool.  After it has cooled a bit, process the beans into a smooth paste using a food mill or squishing through a sieve with a wooden spoon. You should get about 1 cup of paste.  Set aside to use, or cover and place in the refrigerator for up to 5 days.

Then…

For the bread:

ingredients:
3 1/2c (456g) flour, divided
2 1/4 t yeast
1c (240g) milk
1/4c (50g) sugar
1/4c (47g)shortening
1t salt
1 egg, room temperature

Wisk 1 3/4c (228g) flour and the yeast in a large bowl.

In a small saucepan over low heat combine milk, shortening, sugar and salt. Stir gently until shortening is dissolved. Let cool a bit until mixture is warm- around 120 degrees.

Add milk mixture to dry ingredients, then add egg, and stir to combine. Add remaining 1 3/4c (228g) flour. Mix until dough starts to come together, then turn out onto floured work surface and knead for about 10 minutes until smooth and elastic.   If the dough seems too sticky, add up to a 1/4c more flour and continue to knead.

Grease a large bowl, and toss the dough around a little to coat before covering with saran wrap and setting aside in a warm spot to rise for 2 hours.

After 2 hours, turn your dough out onto a floured work surface and roll into an 8 inch by 18 inch long rectangle- the dough should be about 1/2 inch thick.  With a spoon, drop about 3/4 cup of the bean paste in little dallops all across the dough.  Using the back of your spoon or an offset spatula, gently spread the bean paste to create an even layer-about 1/8 inch thick- across the length of the rectangle, leaving an inch of the dough on all sides of the dough bean paste free (this will make it easier to seal before rolling).  

Fold over each side of the rectangle so a seam runs down the center of the dough. Pinch all the open edges closed, so it looks like you have a little, flat parcel.

Next, rotate the dough on your floured surface so that the narrow end is parallel to your hips.  Roll out the dough to flatten the seams and make the rectangle of dough roughly as large as it was when you started- about 8 inches wide and 18 inches long. Then, fold the dough into thirds, like you would if you were folding a piece of paper to put into an envelope. Roll the dough out again to about 18 inches long.

Repeat the step of folding the dough into thirds, like a letter, but this time, roll it out just so that the layers press together and the piece of dough is just a couple inches longer than your loaf pan.  Ideally, you want to end up with a piece off dough about 8 inches wide and 10 inches long.

Make two lengthwise cuts in the dough so you have three segments. Turn the segments on their sides so that the cut edges showing off the lovely bean paste layers are facing up. Braid the dough.  Pinch the ends together, and gently tuck under the loaf before placing the dough into a loaf pan that has been lined with parchment and greased.

 

Preheat oven to 375 degrees.

Cover loosely with plastic wrap and let rise for another 2 hours.

Preheat oven to 375 degrees.

If you would like your loaf to have a shiny top, beat together 1 egg with 1 tablespoon of milk and brush on the top prior to baking.

Bake 35- 40 minutes on the middle rack.

 

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