ScarlettSweet Rice Punch
December 4th 2007 09:51
Sweet Rice Punch
About Sweet Rice Punch
A thirst-quenching rice and malt punch, shikhae has a lovely sweet taste with a hint of spice. It is the most popular of traditional Korean drinks, particularly on a hot day when nothing beats a bowl of the fragrant chilled liquid with ice cubes floating on top.
About Red Date
Red date, Ziziphus, Jujube, or Chinese Date, is a species of Ziziphus in the buckthorn family Rhamnaceae. Its precise distribution is uncertain due to extensive cultivation, but is thought to be in southern Asia, between Suria, northern India, and southern and central China, and possibly also southern Europe though more likely introduced there.
It is the fruit of a small deciduous tree or shrub reaching a height of 5-10m, usually with thorny branches. This fruit is an edible oval drupe 1.5 – 3 cm long; when immature it is smooth-green, with the consistency and taste of an apple, maturing dark red to purplish-black and eventually wrinkled, looking like a small date (hence the name Chinese Date). There is a single hard stone, similar to an olive stone.
About Malt and Malting
Malting is a process applied to cereal grains, in which the grains are made to germinate and then are quickly dried before the plant develops.
The term “malt” refers to several paroducts of the process:
1. the grains to which this process has been applied, for example malted barley;
2. the sugar dervied from such grains which is heavy in maltose, such as baker’s malt;
3. a product, based on malted milk, similar to a malted milkshake (ie., “malt”);
4. whisky or beer can also be called malt as in Alfred Edward Housman’s aphorism “malt does more than Miltion can, to justify God’s ways to Man.”
Malted grain is used to make beer, whisky, and malt vinegar. Malting grains develops the enzymes that are required to modify the grain’s starches into sugars, principally maltose. Barley is the most commonly malted grain because of its high diastatic power or enzyme content. Other grains may be malted, although the resulting malt may not have sufficient enzymatic content to convert its own starch content fully and efficiently.
INGREDIENTS
Serves 4
450 gm / 1 lb / 4 cups malt
350 gm / 12 oz / 3 cups cooked rice
30 ml / 2 tablespoons sugar
10 gm / ¼ oz fresh root ginger, peeled and sliced
1 cinnamon stick
To granish
1 red date, thinly sliced, pine
pine nuts
ice cubes
1. Roughly blend the malt in a food processor, then place in a large bowl. Add 1.5 litre / 2½ pints / 6¼ cups water and leave for 1 hour.
2. Drain the liquid through muslin (cheesecloth) into a bowl, reserving the malt in the cloth. Repeat this process again, pouring the liquid repeatedly through the malt-lined cloth. After three or four times the liquid should thicken and become opaque. Discard the malt.
3. Put the cooked rice into a large pan and add the malt liquid. Heat gently to 40ºC / 104ºF or hand hot and keep at that temperature for about 5 hours. Once the grains begin to float on the surface remove the rice from the liquid, cool and place in a bowl in the refrigerator.
4. Turn the heat under the malt liquid to high. Once boiling add the sugar, ginger and cinnamon, and simmer for a few minutes.
5. After this discard the ginger and cinnamon stick, and transfer the liquid to a jug (pitcher). Cool and chill in the refrigerator.
6. In a small bowl combine the chilled rice and malt liquid.
7. Just before serving, add a sprinkling of sliced red date, a handful of pine nuts and some ice cubes.
**From “Korean Cooking” and “Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia”**
| 192 |
| Vote |
Subscribe to this blog
