This week I will take my one and only child to meet his teacher and hopefully a few new friends at kindergarten roundup. On New Year’s Day he joyously proclaimed, “this is the year I go to kindergarten,” and was disappointed to learn that a calendar year and a school year are different things, and that he still had five months of preschool and a summer to go before he would be joining me at the elementary school.

I will be so proud to walk with him into his new classroom and to see his name printed on the roster, but of course, like so many things in motherhood, it will be bittersweet. His babyhood is far behind us, the tender years before testing and ranking are swiftly ending, and it all is happening so fast. If this stage of his childhood can so quickly become a memory, how fast will the rest of it fly by? My father told me that every year of my life has gone faster than the year before. Then one day, long before he had made peace with it, he watched his only babies walk across a stage into adulthood… and someday I will, too.

With a heart full of joy and grief I will watch him begin this new phase of life. He has surpassed all my hopes and dreams for a child, and I know he will rise to all the challenges he will face after this golden summer when he joins the big kids at school.

The big kids in Korea often walk to and from school. You’ll see them all lined up with tags on their backpacks and a group of parents guiding them across streets and through crosswalks. After school, it’s common to see parents treating their little ones with a snack from a street vendor. You can find these sweet, stuffed pancakes, called hotteok, all over the city, and they make a perfect after-school snack.

Hotteok

Ingredients:

For the dough

1 cup warm water

1 tablespoon active dry yeast

2 tablespoons sugar

1 tablespoon vegetable oil

2 cups all-purpose flour

1 teaspoon salt

For the filling

½ cup brown sugar

2 tablespoons toasted sesame seeds

1/3 cup chopped walnuts

Directions:

Gently stir together the warm water, yeast, sugar and oil in a large mixing bowl.

Let the mixture rest until frothy, about 10 minutes.

Stir in the flour and salt until a very sticky dough forms.

Cover with a towel or plastic wrap and let rise until doubled, about 1 hour.

When the dough has doubled, punch it down to release all the bubbles and let it rise again for another 15 minutes.

Make the filling by whisking together all the ingredients.

Very generously flour your surface before turning the dough out. The dough will be very sticky so be liberal with the flour.

Use your hands to divide the dough into 8 equal portions.

Take a ball of dough and gently flatten it into a disk in your hand.

Use a spoon to dish out some of the filling into the center of the disk, pressing down to allow room for more. Each one should have about 2 tablespoons of filling inside.

Use your fingers to fold the edges of the dough around the filling and gently seal the top. Repeat with all 8 portions.

Heat a large fry pan or skillet with a couple tablespoons of neutral cooking oil.

When the oil is hot, turn the ball seam-side down and fry for a couple minutes until a golden crust forms.

Flip the ball and use a spatula to flatten it into a disk.

Fry until golden brown, turn, and continue cooking until both sides are crispy.

Remove from the pan and serve warm.

Store in an airtight container in the refrigerator for as long as they last.

They are a little disappointing cold, so reheat them in a toaster oven before serving leftovers.