> I just went out to a Korean restaurant for lunch with a friend. They
> served a small cup of what I first took to be water but when i tasted
> it, it clearly was not. It tasted strangely familiar, but I couldn't
> place it.

what you tasted was malt water that has been sweetened by the conversion
of the starch in short grain rice to sugar. some places dump extra sugar
in for good measure, even though you dont need to.

> My friend, who's Cantonese, recognized it.

as it turns out, he was wrong.

> He said that they take the pot they cooked the rice in (containing some
> rice remnants and the starchy/crusty film), rinse it out, and serve the
> chilled, filtered water used to rinse it. In other words, as he phrased it,
> it's dishwater.

haha, thats really cute. but wrong. maybe its a cantonese thing?
out in the boondocks of guangdong or something where farmers have to make
do with dishwater, etc...?

>It was rather tasty and refreshing--had a very light, nutty-caramel
>taste to it.
>
>Has anyone else here had this?

many korean restaurants do serve shikhye after the end of the meal, esp
in summer time. it is, as you say, nutty and a bit sweet. a good way
to end meals.

recipe follows:

shik-hye: korean malted sweet rice beverage

hello!~ its getting hot these days. almost summer time! so heres my favourite
summertime recipe. if you try it, i hope youre not disappointed! do NOT ever
purchase the canned crap that they sell at the korean markets!

-hahna

shik-hye, (malted glutinous rice beverage)

korean dish; usually served as a sweet, after dinner during the summer months.
[notes are at the end for bracked numbered items]


ingredients
1 pound (16 ounces) yeotgireum [1]
1/2 gallon water (= 8 cups) for the yeotgireum
3 cups glutinous rice
2 and a half cups water (for the rice)


optional ingredients
sugar
knobs of fresh ginger
cinnamon sticks
pinenuts


special equipment
large water pitcher, capacity of 1/2 gallon (8 cups)
large rice cooker, capacity of 1 gallon (16 cups) [2]


method (pithy)

pour all the yeotgireum into a large pitcher. pour water water into the pitcher
and mix well, making sure all the powder has been mixed. set aside (in a cool
place -- the fridge is ideal) to let the mixture settle.

if you bought the yeotgireum with the hulls, spoon or strain the hulls out (with
a spoon or through a wire mesh or by using cheesecloth). pour the top clearish
layer into another container and set aside. you should have 5 to 6 cups of the
malt water.

rinse 3 cups of glutinous rice and cook it in a large rice cooker with 2 and a
half cups of water. right after the rice has cooked, proceed IMMEDIATELY to the
next step. DO NOT, under any circumstances, hold the rice for any amount of time.
slightly undercooked rice is prefered. take the malt water you reserved and pour
it all into the steamed glutinous rice. mix thoroughly.

leave the rice cooker on 'warm' for 3 to 4 hours.

bring the mixture to a boil and then you are done.

makes about 25 half cup servings. keep in the refrigerator no more than a week.
shik-hye can be served warm right away, but it is usually served very well
chilled.

to serve: dole out shik-hye into small rice bowls in half cup increments.
top with 3 or 4 pine nuts.

method (unabridged)

pour all the yeotgireum into a large pitcher. pour several cups of water into the
pitcher and mix well, making sure all the powder has been mixed; then top off the
pitcher with more water until you have about half a gallon of the mixture. stir
well again and then set aside for one to two hours to let the mixture settle.
make sure that you let it settle in a cool place. inside of your refrigerator is
fine. letting the mixture settle outside of the fridge is okay, too, as long as
it isn't 80 degrees in the kitchen. if it is, the mixture can ferment [3].

the mixture will settle into 2 distinct layers: a clear, brownish top layer and a
cloudy, particle-filled bottom layer. if you had to buy the yeotgireum with the
hulls, you will find a layer of the hulls floating at the very top. lucky you!
you will have to find some method of straining those out. if you have one of
those neat wire mesh thingys with the handles (i think theyre used for deep
frying...), all the better. a spoon will do in a pinch, though. hulls or sans
hulls, pour the top clearish layer into another container and set aside. you
should have 5 to 6 cups of the malt water. if youre slightly under, no worries,
you can add 3 or 4 more cups of water to the cloudy layer, mix and wait for that
to settle and add it at a later point (ill tell you when). take a whiff of the
clear malt water. it should smell sweet. if it doesnt, it has probably
fermented, and youll have to start over. discard the bottom cloudy layer of
liquid (unless you're making more malt water, of course).

rinse 3 cups of glutinous rice and cook it in a large rice cooker with 2 and a
half cups of water. right after the rice has cooked, proceed IMMEDIATELY to the
next step. DO NOT, under any circumstances, hold the rice for any amount of time.
slightly undercooked rice is prefered; well cooked, or overcooked rice will result
in failure [4]. take the malt water you reserved and pour it all into the steamed
glutinous rice. mix thoroughly.

leave the rice cooker on 'warm' for 3 to 4 hours. during this time, you can add
more malt water if you were short earlier. if you 'held' your rice for a good
amount of time before you added the malt water, or if you cooked it with too much
water, you may find that you have one large pot of sticky, gluey starch. i once
tried to make shik-hye with steamed rice that i cooked the day before and i got
the prized pot of glue. so please make sure to add the malt water immediately
after the rice has cooked.

if properly made, you will find that the steamed rice has lost its heavy starchy
properties and traded them for light insubstantial qualities. bring the mixture
to a boil and then you are done.

makes about 25 half cup servings. keep in the refrigerator no more than a week.

shik-hye can be served warm right away (yummy!), but it is usually served very
well chilled and tastes positively nummy on hot, humid summer evenings.

to serve: dole out shik-hye into small rice bowls in half cup increments [5].
top with 3 or 4 pine nuts.

options:

option one. while still warm, you may add sugar to taste. 'to taste' is such a
vague term, i know, but ive had all sorts of shik-hye and it really is a personal
preference. the shik-hye itself is sweet, without any added sugar whatsoever,
because the malt converts a lot of the starch in the rice to sugar during the
cooking. and, in olden times, most people didnt have access to sugar and never
added it. anyhow, some people prefer shik-hye just the way it is, with just a
teensy bit of sweetness, others perfer it to be sugar water with tiny bits of rice
floating around. anywhere in between is fine. but undersweet (no sugar) is
always a safe bet, because then guests can always sweeten to their own tastes with
more sugar.

option two. after you have added the yeotgireum water to the steamed rice, you
can added peeled knob of fresh ginger or a stick or two of cinnamon [6] for fun.
i like the ginger, personally.

[1] yeotgireum, barley malt powder, comes in two forms at the korean market: 1) as
a powder (yeotgireum-garu) or 2) with the hulls still left in with the
powder. both work fine in the recipe, but if a choice is available, i
suggest getting the powder; the hulls can be a pain in the ass. yeotgireum is
pronounced "yut-gee-rm", with the 'g' soft as in 'golf'.

[2] recipe can easily be halved or doubled depending on the size of your rice
cooker.

[3] speaking from experience here. one summer i had kept a pitcher out for a couple
hours and it was sooooo hot that day that the mixture just bubbled up and turned
sour on me. too bad i dont know how to make beer, or i might have saved the
batch!

[4] cutting back the water is sort of an insurance to prevent overcooking,
actually. normally, the water to rice ratio (for glutinous rice) is 1:1.

[5] half a cup serving if you want to be polite and civilised. if you want to be
barbaric and uncouth, go for the five cup servings like we do at our cave.

[6] cassia or ceylon, doesnt matter. i dont think koreans are too particular
about which for this dish. :-P


--
im good for nothing, but im good.
-010522 hjk