Tteokbokki began as a royal court dish of rice cakes stir fried with beef and soy sauce, recorded in a nineteenth century cookbook. The bright red version every Korean knows arrived in 1953, when Ma Bok rim, a restaurant owner in Seoul's Sindang dong, hit upon seasoning rice cakes with gochujang, the fermented chili paste. The snack is now sold from carts and stalls across the country, steaming in wide flat pans.

Its appeal is texture as much as flavor: the rice cakes are soft and chewy, almost bouncy, and the sauce, thickened by their starch, is sweet first and spicy second, then spicy first. Twenty minutes in one pan, eaten with toothpicks or a fork, it is exactly what a cool October afternoon at Yeongam would call for, and what a cool October afternoon anywhere else will gladly accept.

The broth

Ingredients

• 3 cups (720 ml) water
• 1 piece (4 inches / 10 cm square) dried kelp
• 6 large dried anchovies

The tteokbokki

Ingredients

• 1 pound (450 g) cylinder rice cakes
• 2 sheets (about 4 oz / 115 g) Korean fish cakes
• 3 tablespoons gochujang
• 1 to 2 teaspoons gochugaru
• 1 tablespoon soy sauce
• 2 tablespoons sugar
• 2 garlic cloves
• 1 cup (70 g) green cabbage
• 2 scallions
• 2 hard boiled eggs
• 1 teaspoon toasted sesame seeds

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