Corn sauteed in butter is folded with mayonnaise, covered with mozzarella and heated in the cup it is served in. A microwave or an oven both do the job. Each spoonful pulls up a string of cheese, and the corn underneath is sweet and salty.
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Hot dashi poured over a potato-starch crust starts softening it right away: the edges turn tender while the middle stays crisp only briefly. That brief contrast is the whole point, and the tofu goes from the oil to the bowl and straight to the table.
Dough rolled into an open boat is filled with cheese and baked, then an egg and a pat of butter go into the middle for a second bake. The cheese here is a mix of mozzarella, ricotta, and feta in place of Georgian Imeruli and sulguni. To eat it, tear off pieces of the crust and swirl them through the cheese and egg.
Thick-walled and mild, asakigochu peppers need only 20 seconds in boiling water to lose their raw smell while keeping their crunch. The dressing is doenjang and gochujang with a little vinegar. Use cheongyang chilies in the same sauce and the dish turns much hotter.
The name sounds like a vegetable pickle, but this Akita dish is mostly a chilled rice base cooked with sugar and sharpened with vinegar. Soaked rice is ground with a few grains left whole, which gives it a slightly nubbly texture. Cucumber and turnip go in only once the base is completely cold, to keep their crunch, and seasonal fruit sits on top.
Thin-sliced beef brisket goes into a dry pan first, and the fat it renders cooks the garlic, onion and zucchini. If the brisket gives off plenty, the cooking oil can be cut back. It is a side for rice, or spooned over a hot bowl of it as a quick rice bowl.
Pork large intestine is stuffed with glutinous rice, pork blood, blanched mung bean sprouts and napa cabbage, and doenjang, then steamed into a thick sundae that cuts into broad, heavy slices. The casing is filled only about 80 percent to leave room for the rice to swell, and the cooked sundae cools completely before slicing, or the filling squeezes out.
Frozen acai blended with banana, blueberries, and Greek yogurt turns into a thick, deep purple base like sorbet, with an earthy, almost cocoa-like note behind the berry flavor. The acai palm grows in the Amazon basin, and the bowl format topped with granola, fruit, and honey spread from Rio de Janeiro surf culture in the 1980s. The contrast between cold base and crunchy granola fades fast, so it goes to the table right away.
Thin coins of ginger and a cinnamon stick steep in steaming, not boiling, water for five minutes, until the liquid turns a light amber. The apple cider vinegar waits until the tea has cooled below 60°C, and honey is stirred in last. A pinch of gochugaru, Korean chili powder, adds a second kind of heat, different from the ginger's.
Flying fish, called ago in Tottori, gives these bamboo-core fish cakes a darker color than ordinary chikuwa made mostly from pollock, and a skin that grills firm enough to make a sound under a knife. Tear them by hand as a drinking snack with soy sauce, or slice them into soups and simmered dishes.
The zucchini is cut into thick half-moons, so it keeps its shape in the soup and releases a little sweetness when you bite into it. For more of a kick, slice in a cheongyang chili, a sharp Korean green pepper.
The ingredient list is short enough to make this a handy way to use up brined cabbage left over at kimchi-making time. Each leaf gets a thin batter, just enough that the veins still show through, and the thick stem ends are pounded flat with the back of a knife. Cooked napa cabbage tastes noticeably sweeter than raw.
Gochujang toasts in rendered pork fat before any broth goes in, and that spicy red oil gives the stew more body than simply boiling everything together. Zucchini half-moons simmer for 6 minutes, enough to take on seasoning without collapsing into mush.
Finely chopped salted shrimp loosened in water seasons this zucchini side dish instead of soy sauce, a habit handed down from country tables where salted shrimp was the main seasoning. Cooking it covered over medium-low heat lands somewhere between steaming and braising, and the zucchini softens without going mushy.
Thin slices of cucumber, eggplant, lotus root and carrot share the bowl with chewy wood ear mushroom, shiso and ginger, and each bite lands somewhere different on the crunch scale. Each vegetable is prepped on its own terms: the hard lotus root and carrot get a short blanch, while the softer cucumber and eggplant are rubbed with salt instead. The sweet vinegar with sliced red chili is boiled once and then cooled all the way down. Poured on while still warm, it costs the cucumber and lotus root their snap. Squeezing the salted cucumber and eggplant hard after rinsing keeps the dressing from going watery. Half an hour in the fridge is enough before serving it cold with its liquid.
With no broth to dilute it, the soy, sesame oil, and oyster sauce mixture at the bottom of the bowl clings straight to the noodles, so every mouthful lands at full strength. A small splash of vinegar keeps the oil from feeling heavy, and a bowl that starts to taste greasy just needs one more toss from the bottom up.
Aglio e olio means garlic and oil, and the Neapolitan dish asks for little beyond that: sliced garlic, chili flakes, olive oil, and spaghetti. With so few ingredients, the result rests on how the garlic cooks. Over low heat it should reach a pale gold in 3 to 4 minutes, and a few seconds past that the oil turns bitter. Starchy pasta water, added in portions and shaken hard with the oil, turns into a cloudy emulsion that clings to every strand. The traditional version uses no cheese and no cream.
Chewy abalone, slippery sea mustard, and crisp cucumber with red cabbage give this cold salad three textures in every forkful. The whole dish hinges on a blanch of about 40 seconds followed by ice water, because abalone toughens quickly with heat. The dressing of lemon juice, plum syrup, and soup soy sauce stays light, supporting the shellfish's natural brininess instead of masking it. Serve it chilled as a summer starter or ahead of grilled dishes.
Peru and Ecuador both have a sauce called aji criollo; this Peruvian one cooks aji amarillo with onion and garlic until soft, then blends it, while the Ecuadorian version uses raw chili. Softened peppers leave fewer tough skin flecks in the blender, and water is added only when the blade stalls, keeping the sauce thick enough to spoon onto food. Cilantro gets chopped and stirred in at the end instead of blended, leaving green flecks visible through the sauce. Swapping in another chili changes both the yellow color and the heat. This version contains no milk or mayonnaise.
Lifted from the center of the soy milk, Nikko yuba comes up doubled, thick, and rippled, and agemaki yuba is that tofu skin rolled into sticks, fried, and dried. The rolls simmer slowly in a sweet, mild dashi, and cooling them in the liquid is what carries the flavor to the center.
Cornstarch makes up a large share of the flour in these cookies, which is why they crumble so tenderly before the thick layer of dulce de leche in the middle takes over. Dulce de leche, milk cooked down slowly into caramel, has a strong toffee flavor, so the cookies themselves are kept plain. The sweet traces back to medieval Andalusia, but this round sandwich form took shape in 19th-century Argentina and Uruguay. Pulled from the oven before they color, the rounds stay pale and soft.
Mallow usually ends up in doenjang soup in Korean kitchens; blanched and dressed instead, its soft leaves turn slippery and hold onto the fermented paste. Too long in the water and the mucilage loosens until the leaves clump into a slick mass, while too short leaves a grassy smell behind.
Flying fish roe, stir-fried kimchi and diced yellow pickled radish sit in sections over rice, scattered with crushed seasoned laver and scallion. The rice is tossed with sesame oil and butter first for a gloss. Left on hot rice, the roe goes slack and the laver soggy, and the bowl is mixed the moment it is ready.
Canned tuna is already cooked, so the zucchini goes in first and the tuna joins only for the last 2 minutes. Added at the start, the tuna breaks into crumbs while the zucchini sheds a lot of water. Soup soy sauce and gochugaru (Korean chili flakes) go in sparingly, enough to tint the zucchini red without making any liquid.
Bacon, bread and eggs all cook one after another in the same pan, and the bread, toasted in butter, comes out crisp enough to seem almost fried. A tablespoon of ketchup is spread thinly to the edges and the sugar scattered evenly to keep the sweetness from piling up in one bite. Shredded cabbage tucked in adds crunch and bulk.