Korean Style Red Bean Shaved Ice Patbingsoo (팥빙수): Obsessions come home

There was a summer during college, when I went to Korea in order to figure out if teaching was what I wanted to do.  My aunt helped line up a series of students for me to experiment on, and I landed in Korea and had my own tiny little room in another aunt's house.  I spent my days teaching and my evenings hunting down Seoul's best version of their summer time dessert, patbingsoo, or red bean shaved ice.

I actually remember the first time someone offered it to me and I was immediately put off by the idea of red bean and ice.  WHAT?  Weird!  It's like refried beans that are cold?  Gross!  No way!  But when my cousin insisted that I try it, I did and I was so hooked I became obsessed.  My cousin suggested that we attempt to eat one red bean shaved ice each day and compare our favorites and find out which we liked the best.  It sounded like a great challenge and I'd even skip dinner some nights (as it was super hot anyways) just so I could go out and hunt for a great shaved ice with my cousin.  We ate cheap ones from mini corner stores that had a ton of fruit cocktail dumped on top, to fancier versions in hotel restaurants that had expensive and beautifully cut fruit arranged on top, much like one would decorate a cake.  We would eat them in bakeries and we would hunt them down in bookstores.  It became a ritual to hunt down another place where we could have them and we fulfilled our daily intake of shaved ice that summer.

While living in Korea, I also would occaisionally grab one during the summer, but for some reason I wasn't as crazy about it as I used to be.  Perhaps it was my anti-bean husband who didn't much care for it, or the fact that it's one of those dishes I associate with solitude and peace, and children don't equal solitude and peace.  For whatever reason, I didn't eat it much.

Last week, on the 4th of July, I had some friends over, and my friend brought this dish as a dessert.  There were a good number of people over, but she prepared an awesome selection of fruits and toppings and brought it over to share.  I shaved ice for folks and people got to decide what they wanted on their patbingsoo.  It was Children's first time ever seeing a manual ice shaver (yes, we've never been to Hawaii) and it ended up being super exciting for them.

In short, I had to go out and get everything so that I could begin my love affair with patbingsoo again.  I tried grinding the ice in the Vitamix as an initial solution, and it kind of worked, but not as well as I wanted.  I went and got a manual ice shaving machine from our local Ranch 99 along with a bunch of other ingredients readily available at the market.  Children became experts at creating the shaved ice dish of their dreams and I began creating the shaved ice versions from my own memory.

I personally favor the simpler shaved ices, which focuses more on fresh fruit and fewer toppings like this one.  With shaved ice, watermelon, red bean, mochi, and a little scoop of sweetened condensed milk it's the most refreshing one that I enjoy.

 Some people like a more complicated, more topping-filled one which has a variety of fruits, nata de coco (coconut jelly), lychees (canned), mochi, sweetened condensed milk and a sprinkling of cereal.

There is also the option of a scoop of vanilla ice cream to add to your shaved ice.

 Then you have my nutty kids who refuse to eat the red bean (which is sort of the whole point of the dish) and proceed to enjoy their shaved ice with a ton of fruit and a ton of syrupy soaked toppings.  Go figure.

The range of choices is super wide and people seem to have their own preferences of what they like so you can set out a bar of choices and let people construct them.  The key is to have cold everything - fruit, canned items, and condensed milk.  The colder everything is, the less ice meltage you have, which is the desired effect.  Prepare and wash your fruit and cut it and stick it back in the fridge until you are ready to serve.

The important ingredient is the ice itself.  Ice shavers come in a variety of permutations, but the best ones are simple to use, simple to clean, and simple to replace.  I found one for $11 at Ranch 99, and a lot of Asian markets will have one for less than you can find online.  In addition, try to find one that includes the ice molds so that you can create large disks of ice that shave the most efficiently in your ice shaver.  You can also find them on Amazon for a little bit more money, but if you're not close to a Chinese or Asian market, it may be your best option.

 As for my canned ingredients, here they are.  The red beans, although probably even tastier if I made them myself, taste very lovely in this dish from a can.  Sweetened condensed milk is the final sweet and creamy touch on top.  Nata de coco are coconut jellies and are currrently the obsession of both Daughters.  They also like the lychees in syrup, even though I'm not a huge fan.  All these I got at my local Ranch 99, with the red beans and condensed milk coming in at above $3.

Some people even like a little sprinkling of cereal. I think the tiny bits of mochi, which are at your local Korean market or Japanese market, are the most important.  But choose what you like and arrange cold toppings on a tray or a table and let your guests go to work!

My obsession at home!  I'm ready to mix this up!

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