Sook Danja: Health Is Wealth In Rice Cakes
“You’re making mochi! What flavor ice cream are you putting in it?“, was the question my roommate asked me as she walked out into our kitchen where I had begun preparing the ingredients for sook danja (쑥단자) - also known as mugwort glutinous rice cake. As Asian food continues to gain culinary influence internationally, I’ve noticed a correlated increase in interest but also generalization towards Asian foods by my peers. By no means was my friend’s misconception that mochi should be filled by ice cream her fault. Yet, it motivated me to explore the traditional flavors and ingredients with accuracy. Nowadays, Koreans are familiar with traditional dishes through the modern lens as well. As café and restaurant culture in Korea is constantly demanding something new, it is natural that traditional recipes are being adapted to titillate customers. For my project, I recreated a modern-day rendition from a traditional recipe for the Korean rice cake called danja.
Figure 1: A screenshot of the original text from the Jeungbo Sallim Gyeongje by Yu Jung-rim [3]
Figure 2: A screenshot of Professor Yoon with her rice cakes - taken from the Go K-food youtube video [3]
To approach the recipe authentically, I followed the reconstruction by Professor Yoon Sook-ja – a Korea food scholar who referred to the text Jeungbo Sallim Gyeongje (증보산림경제) – a Korean agricultural text by Yu Jung-rim. Loosely translated, the title means “Revised Farm Management”, yet the text contains culinary and craft knowledge as well. Yu’s medicinal and contextual understanding as physician during the reign of King Yeongjo of the Choson Dynasty, supplemented his studies, revision, and expansion of the original text Sallim Gyeonghe (산림경제) by Hong Man-seon. While the age and rarity of both texts made it near-impossible to reference the text directly, I supplemented my research with recipes for danja from The Encyclopedia of Daily Life: A Woman’s Guide to Living in Late-Choson Korea by Madame Yi. Here Madame Yi thoroughly describes danja recipes made from Yuzu citrus and Angelica Gigas – a type of purple parsnip with an herbal quality comparable to mugwort. Madame Yi’s recipe for the angelica gigas danja is below:
“Pound fresh angelica gigas leaves, mix with glutinous rice flow, pound more in a mortar, boil in water, and mix with honey until doughy. Put red-bean honey stuffing in a small piece of dough, coat with chopped pine nuts and serve.”
While my rework of danja more closely followed the instruction of Professor Yoon, I took note and adapted my recipe to honor Madame Yi’s text throughout my process. Madame Yi’s vast recipes clearly reflect the seasonal nature of Korean cooking, this served as my justification for choosing to stick with mugwort as the herbal ingredient while making danja.
What is Danja?
Etymologically, danja is quite literal: Dan (단) means “round” and ja (자) means rice cake. This perfectly describes the physical qualities as Danja is a globular rice cake filled with a rich and fragrant paste.
Danja is not the only alias for rice cake, as there are many other variations of rice cakes which could easily be confused as danja. Songpyeon and Injeolmi, for example, are amongst the many types of rice cakes originating from the Choson kitchens. This realm of dishes better known as tteok, covers both savory and sweet rice cakes which serve as both festive and everyday food in Korea. In fact, by the late Choson dynasty, a total of 112 different preparations of tteok were commonly prepared.
What surprised me most about many of the tteok recipes I read was the use of glutinous rice flour as the base for the rice cake. While I welcomed the convenience of using a packaged flour, I had expected to use rice in its organic form. Idealistic as it may be, the labor intensive pounding of rice into tteok is what I thought to be an essential part of the process before modern time. The ingenuity and aesthetic of Korean cooking is reflected in this method, as working with flour was applicable to techniques outside of rice cake making. Various flours were added to stuffing and used to make gomul – dustings/toppings- for decorative purpose as well.
Vegetables, fruits, and even meats were sub-ingredients that became prevalent in tteok making by the end of the Choson dynasty as well. These ingredients represented flavor, but more significantly nutritional value. Informed by oriental medicine, Korean cuisine put health at the forefront of their priorities when passing on literary knowledge of food.
Mugwort’s Uses and Significance
Mugwort carries both a luxurious and nutritious character. Traditionally, dating back to Silla dynasty, its purpose was primarily medicinal. Over time, its usage has changed. In modern Korean gastronomy, it produces a bright and earthy flavor profile and acts as a coloring agent.
More formally known as Artemisia princeps Pampan – when eaten raw, the first flavor note you get is a slight grassiness, followed by a minty herbal pungency. Lastly, there’s a slight bitterness which disappears when it is cooked.
The plant has many medicinal properties atop of its flavor profile. Considered a warm food in oriental medicine, Mugwort helps relieve menstruation pains, digestive issues, and chronic pain. It’s warm quality is believed to stimulate the flow of energy by oriental medicine scholars. This belief has led to its use not only as an ingredient in food but in practice well known as ddeumjil (뜸질), also known as moxibustion. Moxibustion is an external treatment practice in Chinese medicine which requires burning of a wool on or above the skin to increase the flow of energy throughout the body. Chinese acupuncturists of the Tang dynasty found after drying and grinding mugwort leaves, it could produce moxa wool, the key ingredient in this practice of moxibustion. This practice is founded on shamanistic beliefs that blockages in the flow of one’s qi (energy) can lead to health problems. The earliest record’s we have of this use of mugwort is in the text Medical Secretes of an Official by Waitai Miyao.
Mugwort’s value has historically been acknowledged by Korean women as it is also incorporated in traditional bathhouses as an ingredient added to herbal baths. In modern day Korea, mugwort can be found in popular café’s as the highlighted ingredient in desserts such as cheesecakes, breads, and lattes. It has stayed a popular ingredient in Korea to present day thanks to it’s abundance on the peninsula during the spring months. Mugwort’s significance in Korean cuisine can be contributed to its food philosophy, which aims to use seasonal ingredients in cooking.
The Process
I was grateful for the visual aid which Professor Yoon’s video provided. Her summary of Yu’s recipe made the preparation of ingredients and cooking process fairly easy to understand.
The following were the ingredients her recipe used:
Glutinous Rice Flour
Roasted Chestnuts
Mugwort
Honey
Salt
Below is an image of the ingredient’s I used:
Preparing the Mugwort:
I found that obtaining fresh mugwort proved to be a difficult task. The abundance of the herb during the Spring does in fact not apply in the Midwest. While I contemplated ordering the powdered version of mugwort, all of the recipes I had referenced called for blanched herbs. To preserve the integrity of these recipes, I opted for a dried version which I was able to blanch and grind into the rice flour as you can see below.
Making the dough and filling:
Once the mugwort was prepared, it was time to make the dough. Following Professor Yoon’s recipe, I mixed 4 cups of glutinous rice flour with half a tablespoon of salt and 200 grams of blanched mugwort. After thoroughly grinding and kneading the dough together for about 10 minutes, I formed the dough into smaller lumps to make it easier to boil. 30 seconds after the dough rises to the top of the pot, it would be ready to be kneaded again.
While I waited for the dough to boil for the first time, I made the filling pushing 200 grams of roasted chestnuts through a sieve. This resulted in a powder which I mixed with ½ cup of honey to make a simple but sweet filling.
(not pictured) I then rolled the filling into small balls to make the danja easier to stuff.
Once the dough rose to the top, I used a colander to take out the dough and patted it to lightly remove the moisture. I began kneading the boiled dough again with 2 additional cups of flour. This twofold process ensured that the dough would stick well and have more elasticity, resulting in a chewy texture. Per the consultation of Professor Yoon, I kneaded the boiled dough while it was still warm as malleable dough is required to form dumplings around the filling. Due to this, no additional water was needed to mix in the additional flour.
Forming the danja:
The second boiling process can be compared to boiling dumplings. Sectioning and flattening small balls of dough in my hands, I made pockets in each to add the filling and pinched the edges of the dough together. To prevent the dough from sticking to my hands, I applied honey to hands which helped roll the danja together into balls glistening and ready to boil again.
The second boil took less time for the balls to float to the top – indicating they were ready. Once I pulled them out I placed them in cold water to cool down, transferring them to another cold bath once the water had gone lukewarm.
Coating the danja in gomul:
To prepare the balls for the gomul, I patted the balls down with a cotton cloth. According to the Jeungbo Sallim Gyeongje a variety of gomuls could be used; thus while Professor Yoon used the chestnut powder that was sieved for the filling, As a nod to the Injeolmi I previously mention, I chose to coat my danja with Roasted Soy Bean Flour.
Tossing the danja in this gomul made them appear to be mochi, so I must admit I understand my roommate’s confusion to what I was making. The end result was a beautiful and delicious rice cake.
Out of my own curiosity and personal liking for Murasaki Sweet Potatoes, I decided to use the leftover rice powder to make sweet potato filled danja as well. I have attached a picture of these as well below.
Mugwort rice cake with chestnut filling dusted in soybean powder
Rice cake with sweet potato filling dusted in soybean powder and honey
Reflection
To the best of my ability, I believe I chose to follow the direction of the culinary experts I have aforementioned in this post. I walked away from the rework with a newfound respect for the royal and home chefs in the Choson dynasty who labored to make beautiful and nutritious tteok. It turns out even with the aid of flour, making danja was not an easy task. Yielding about 10 rice cakes, my arms were extremely tired from grinding, kneading, and heaving heavy dough around the kitchen.
It was my intention to adhere to the traditional recipe as I acquired a large mortar and pestle to remake the dough in its original mixing bowl. However I did stray on a few accounts, looking to Madame Yi’s recipe as an additional guide. Her recipe differed because it had red bean filling and called for the danja to be dusted in a gomul of finely chopped pine nuts. However, the options for substitution in the texts gave me reason to justify my decision to change the gomul ingredient.
Taste wise, I enjoyed the fact that the traditional danja was not very sweet. While sugar imports began in the Choson, the sweetness in Korean dishes often came and still do come from ingredients such as honey or grain syrup. The subtle sweetness allowed me to focus on the taste of each ingredient. One of my friends who tried a danja found it to be a bit bland – an observation I partially attribute to the modern taste palate which has become accustomed to stronger flavors.
Areas for improvement:
I think it is notable that most of my ingredients are packaged. While flour was used in the Choson era, processed foods most definitely were not so convenient to acquire. This is also the case with the chestnuts I used which were pre-packaged and pre-cooked. While this straying could have been avoided, the lure of convenience overtook me as I was shopping for ingredients.
Additionally, my second endeavor was not so authentic but I found the danja cooking process to be methodical and easy to follow the second time around. While I do not believe sweet potato is a traditional danja filling, it reminded me of my childhood when I would pick up freshly steamed sweet potato buns whenever I visited Korea in the winter time.
Primary Sources
1. A Literature Review on the Types and Cooking Methods for Joseon Dynasty Tteok (Korean Rice Cake) according to its Sub-Ingredients. by Soon-Duk Oh, and Gui-Chu Lee. Department of Food & Nutrition, Seojeong College University. Department of Home Economics Education, College of Education, Korea University. pp. 1-5 (Korean)
2. Buswell, Robert E., et al. “Tteok .” The Encyclopedia of Daily Life: A Woman's Guide to Living in Late-Chosŏn Korea, University of Hawaii Press, Honolulu, HI, 2021, pp. 104–106.
3. Yoon, Sook-ja, director. [증보산림경제] 향애단자와 쑥두유라테 Hyang-Ae Danja (Mugwort Rice Cake Balls) and Ssook-Duyu Latte. Go K-Food, Youtube, 2 June 2021, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EqF29MoldlU&ab_channel=%EC%9C%A4%EC%88%99%EC%9E%90%EC%9D%98%EC%86%90%EB%A7%9B_GoK-foodbyProfessorYoon. Accessed 30 Mar. 2022.
Secondary Sources
4. L. X. Huang, “A study of the origin and development of moxibustion,” Journal of Clinical Acupuncture and Moxibustion, vol. 9, pp. 11–12, 1995 (Chinese Translated).
5. Yang, Il-Sun. Great Food, Great Stories from Korea, Korean Food Foundation, Seúl, Corea, 2012, pp. 220–222.