수정과
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This is a spiced persimmon punch made from dried hachiya persimmons (곶감). Based on a quick survey on the web, it's made by steeping plenty of sliced, peeled ginger and several cinnamon sticks in boiling water for a period of time (as many as two hours, from what I saw, but I'd go longer), adding some sort of sweetener (brown sugar, regular sugar, honey) so that it dissolves, and then pouring the hot punch over a certain number of dried persimmons.
According to Mom, most dried persimmons are entirely dessicated and so need a minimum amount of time in the cooling punch to reconstitute (and presumably to add their flavors into the mix). Mom bought some half-dried ones ("일등곶감"?) during her January 2012 trip to Korea, so that minimum time will be less.
After cooling the punch to room temperature, you chill it in the refrigerator, then serve it with a wedge of reconstituted 곶감 in the glass with some pine nuts floating on top.
I had thought that only Mom's family made persimmon punch with ginger, but evidently ginger is a standard ingredient. Perhaps Mom's family uses more ginger than average? The most I saw as an ingredient was 1/2 cup sliced ginger in 8 cups water.
Mom's family also uses 오미자 tea instead of plain water as a base. She couldn't remember whether they also used 대추, but I rallied against it. I think that 대추 evokes Oriental herbal sludges (excuse me, medicine), because some of them are made with ye olde jujubes. No thank you.
To summarize, here are the ranges of ingredients I saw for 수정과:
- 6-10 cups water / 오미자 if using Mom's family recipe
- 1/3 to 1/2 cup thinly sliced, peeled ginger
- 5 to 10 cinnamon sticks
- 1/2 cup to 1 cup sugar (or replace some of the sugar with honey)
- 4 to 6 dried persimmons 곶감
- pine nuts for garnish
Notes
Mom made a batch for us the week of March 6, 2012.
One of the sites from above noted web research: http://www.thekitchn.com/recipe-sujeonggwa-korean-persi-75162
