Susan Makes Crispy Rice Cakes With Halloumi

It's nutty,

it's toasty.

It's also easy.

Honestly, this is a dish you can eat any time.

[upbeat music]

So today we're gonna be making,

crispy rice cakes and haloumi

and a brown butter gochujang sauce.

That entails us searing

and crisping up the rice cakes

as well as the haloumi.

There is a brown butter gochujang gochugaru sauce,

that gets poured over everything,

along with a runny egg and some arugula.

So these are the rice cakes.

These are the cylinder shaped,

Korean rice cakes we're gonna be using.

The Korean word for rice cakes is Tteok.

And this dish is kind of a play on tteokbokki.

Which is the fiery red sauce that we see.

I grew up where after school,

I wouldn't get that exact dish,

but my mom would just kind of sear it on a pan

like we're gonna do with a little oil,

crisp it up.

And then she would just sprinkle a little salt, sugar,

and soy sauce on it.

And that in itself is a really delicious snack.

So the first thing we're actually going to be doing

is soaking these rice cakes into some water.

The rice cakes that you're gonna purchase

are going to be

in something similar fashion, like this.

Cryovac in the refrigerator,

oftentimes in the freezer,

they are all dehydrated to a certain degree.

So pouring water over it is to just rehydrate it

and to ensure more of a consistent product.

So you're gonna wanna do this

for about half an hour to an hour.

It can be as long as overnight if you like.

But basically,

this part is to ensure a rehydration.

I wanna go ahead

and just continue my mise en place

if you will,

and slice some haloumi cheese.

I'm kind of cutting it in a way

that's similar to the shape of the rice cakes.

It's gonna add another depth

to this dish that I really love.

It's also kind of a play in the way that,

like, you know,

I often see cheese

and some mozzarella in Korean cooking.

This is kind of incorporating

that element of cheese into it.

But sort of using a different type of cheese.

Okay, So we're just gonna do a beurre noisette.

Like a brown butter sauce.

Before we add anything to it.

You're gonna start smelling the butter.

It's gonna start smelling toasty and nutty.

The milk solids are gonna start

to drop to the bottom of the pan.

And that stuff you really want.

And essentially make it brown butter.

You're gonna start to see some foaming.

That's gonna be your first clue

that things are going in the right direction.

Also, the color of the butter is darkening a little bit.

You'll know that it's starting

to drop to the bottom of the pan,

meaning the milk solids.

When the foaming subside.

You could already see it.

The foaming is decreasing.

So the golden hue

is gonna come from the color of the milk solids.

And you can see it.

If I pour it out you'll it.

And the solids themselves are changing.

So, I mean, I worked in a Danish restaurant

where they would take it all the way to black.

We're kind of looking for more like a golden hue.

And this is essentially the base of your chili sauce.

So we're gonna start to add ingredients to this.

To make the gochujang sauce.

The sauce is warm.

We want to kind of keep it warm.

So the first thing I'm gonna do,

is add one clove of garlic.

And we're going to microplane that in.

And then we are doing like,

I don't know,

like half a teaspoon of salt.

So that's about it.

We are gonna do some gochujang.

This is a gochujang and gochugaru

from my friends out in San Francisco called Queens.

It's adding heat.

It's adding,

it's also enhancing the nutty toastiness.

I'm also gonna use a tablespoon

of the chili flakes, the gochugaru.

And what's happening,

is now we're getting a more of a thicker sauce too, right?

Then I'm gonna, for the final,

I'm gonna use some brown rice vinegar.

Guess why I'm using this though?

Because, it's also very toasty, nutty vinegar.

It's from,

it's fermenting brown rice.

So it's getting those flavors.

And I think it's just,

it really enhances everything in here.

So now we have the sauce complete

and it's ready to go.

Ready to be drizzled

when we have the other components.

The water is boiling.

Which means,

we are ready to drop these eggs.

We're gonna drop two eggs.

We just drop it like this.

And then just like shimmy out a little bit.

So it's been six and a half minutes.

I'm gonna fish the eggs out

and get it into the water bath,

the ice bath.

I'm using that same spider.

And then it's getting that cold plunge.

From boiling water,

into the ice bath.

It's shocking the eggs,

and it's just stopping the cooking

and the temperature.

And to ensure that

you're getting the consistency you want.

So this is six and a half minute eggs.

It will not cook any further than that

by going into the ice bath.

So now we have our rice cakes.

We have our sliced haloumi.

These are the last things we need to do,

to complete the dish.

So these have been soaking for about an hour.

I'm just gonna drain them in a colander.

Okay.

I'm gonna put it back into the bowl.

I mean, if you want,

you can kind of pat them dry.

Yeah.

The drier they will be,

the less splattery they will be

when you sear them.

Water on oil is gonna make things explode a little bit.

So the drier they are the better.

This is canola oil.

Grapeseed oil will be great.

Grapeseed oil, any neutral cooking oil.

So, that's flattering is because

there are some moisture in the rice cakes.

What I'm seeing right now

is the blistering of the rice cakes.

The texture of the outside is changing.

But there's no color yet.

And I want that sort of,

I want a deeper blistering.

I want a thicker crispier skin,

and I do want some color,

But you're seeing some changes.

I can also feel that

this is getting elastic and chewy.

Now we're starting to get some color.

They look blustery,

they look crispy

and that's exactly what we want.

So I'm gonna go ahead and remove these,

and get this heat back on.

I think we're there.

So I'm gonna go ahead

and start dropping the cheese.

And again, like, you know the oil is high.

You'll hear that splatter,

you'll see that reaction.

And depending on the haloumi.

Like, it'll naturally break.

Like that little piece came off.

Don't worry about it.

All those little bits,

are gonna be very good.

The great thing about a haloumi,

is because it has like,

sort of that high melting point.

It can take heat.

We're getting that golden hue.

We're getting more texture.

It's getting crispy.

It's changing, sort of the texture inside,

but again, it'll still be intact.

It's also adding the visual cue of we

with our eyes first.

So I'm actually gonna take this off heat.

You know, I want the sauce to be warm

when we litter it over everything.

Because also like there's gonna be arugula.

We want that hot mixture to heat the raw greens.

So it's cooled down a little bit.

So I'm reheating it.

And it's also thickened

and kind of seized up a little bit.

So what I'm gonna do is,

just add a couple tablespoons of water to it.

We have all of the components ready.

We are ready to plate.

So I like to put,

like a bed of greens down.

This is some arugula.

This is baby arugula.

I guess this would be considered mature arugula.

So then we are gonna go in

with our rice cakes and haloumi.

And you can sort of put it wherever you like.

Let's drizzle a little sauce right now.

We'll use baby arugula for the topping.

You definitely don't need two separate types of greens.

We have it.

So we're just gonna,

use it as more of a garnish green.

And then those eggs,

coming in.

And then the remainder of the sauce.

Over the eggs as well.

The final thing we're gonna do

is break the eggs.

So, hope these eggs are runny.

Oh right, here we go.

That's good.

It's spicy, it's nutty.

Just, everything really goes together.

So it's like spicier than I thought it would be.

Because again, like,

the gochugaru and the gochujang you used,

like the spicy levels are gonna vary.

But the fat coming from the butter, the yolk,

it really mellows it out

and kind of balances it out too.

I also get the brightness

from the brown rice vinegar.

It's nice to have a bite

of like, salty crispy cheese.

And then some rice cakes.

So it's like,

it's more like the sum of all parts,

you know, that kind of makes this dish sink.

This is a great introduction

on how to cook with rice cakes.

If you haven't played around with haloumi,

this is also another great way

to play with the texture

and the versatility of the cheese.

I hope you'll make it,

because it's very, very easy to do.

I don't know what else I can say.

Besides nutty, toasty, spicy.

Yeah.