Small rolls of plain seasoned rice with no filling sit beside spicy squid and seasoned radish, and you take a bite of one, then the other. It is the Tongyeong way: salt and sesame oil for the rice, and all the heat in the side dishes.
Chwinamul (aster greens, a Korean wild herb) is dressed with soup soy sauce, sesame oil and garlic before it goes on top of the rice, so the rice comes out seasoned and needs no sauce on the side. Lift the lid and the first thing you notice is the herb's slightly bitter scent.
Com tam means broken rice: grains that cracked during milling and were once thrown away as unsellable. Today it is the base of a classic Ho Chi Minh City breakfast, and its small pieces take up the meat's marinade well. Instead of a bone-in chop over charcoal, this version uses thin slices of pork shoulder marinated with lemongrass and seared in a pan.
Think of a cream pasta sauce spooned over rice instead of noodles: butter, garlic and onion, then chicken breast seared until browned, all simmered in heavy cream. Scrape up the browned bits from the pan as the cream goes in; much of the sauce's flavor comes from them.
Curry powder turns the rice golden, lighter than a curry-over-rice plate but more aromatic than ordinary fried rice. Chicken breast, onion, carrot and green pepper are all chopped small.
Fatty beef large intestine is glazed in a sweet, spicy soy sauce and set over rice with onion that has soaked in cold water, a raw egg yolk and fresh wasabi. The wasabi stays on the side, unmixed, and goes on a little at a time with each bite.
Rice, onion and carrot simmer in chicken stock, and ground perilla seed stirred in at the end thickens the porridge. The chicken breast is poached on its own and shredded along the grain, then added only once the rice has nearly broken down, just to heat through.
Chicken thigh, cabbage and onion stir-fried with gochujang and chili flakes get cold rice tossed in, turning dakgalbi into fried rice. Once it is mixed, the rice is pressed against the pan for 30 seconds to sear the bottom, then covered with mozzarella and melted under a lid.
Mozzarella melted over gochujang-glazed chicken thigh pulls into long strands and softens the chili heat. A pan that is not hot enough lets the cabbage and onion release water, and the sauce ends up thin instead of clinging.
No cheese on this one. The chicken thigh is stir-fried in gochujang sauce alone, and it lands on the rice along with soft, sweet cabbage.
The water the chicken breast was poached in becomes the broth for this porridge. Before it goes in, the rice is toasted in sesame oil with minced garlic.
Add dallae (Korean wild chives) to soy butter rice and a sharp, garlicky scent rises over the richness of the butter. Scallions or garlic chives will not do the same thing, which makes this a spring dish, made when dallae is in season.
Part of the kabocha melts into the porridge, so it thickens and turns gently sweet without any added starch. With shrimp and squid in every spoonful, it is closer to a meal than the snack-like pumpkin porridge most people know.
Only two-thirds of the cooked red beans are pushed through a sieve; the rest stay whole, so there are beans to bite into in the thick porridge. The glutinous rice balls (saealsim) need a little more time after they float to cook through to the center.
The deodeok browns in butter, but half the butter is held back and melted into the soy and rice syrup sauce just before the heat goes off. The root is peeled first, then pounded and torn along its fibers.
Stir-fried deodeok root sits beside raw cucumber, carrot, and lettuce, so each bite mixes a cooked, gochujang-coated root with cool, crisp vegetables. Most of the sauce goes into the pan with the deodeok; the rest is added when the bowl is mixed.
Perilla seeds are blended with water and strained before joining the pot, which gives the porridge a smooth, nutty body with no gritty hulls.
The dirty in the name comes from finely chopped chicken liver and pork, which stain the rice brown. It is a Cajun dish from Louisiana, built on the usual onion, green pepper and celery, with cayenne for heat.
A heavy stone pot holds heat evenly, so the rice cooks glossy and plump while a toasted crust forms on the bottom. After the rice is gone, hot water poured over the crust makes sungnyung, a toasty rice-crust tea.
Rice pressed into a hot stone pot keeps sizzling at the table, turning crisp and toasty at the bottom, which is what sets dolsot bibimbap apart from the regular bowl. Scraping up the crust while mixing is part of the meal.
Slice a roll and a wide band of breaded pork fills the middle, with shredded cabbage and tonkatsu sauce tucked beside it. Let the cutlet cool completely on a rack before rolling, or the breading goes soft.
Left undisturbed while it browns, the tofu firms up on the surface and holds together when the egg and soy glaze go into the same pan. Seaweed flakes and sesame oil go on last, over the tofu and egg on the rice.
The tofu is browned on both sides before it ever meets the sauce, then set on a bed of thinly sliced onion and simmered in soy. By the time the sauce has reduced, the onion has all but melted away. Sliced cheongyang chili and scallion go on top for the last minute.
Dureup, the spring shoots of the Korean angelica tree, are around only briefly each spring. They get no more than 30 seconds in salted boiling water before going on top of the rice to cook under the lid; any longer and the bitter, woody scent fades and the green turns dull. The rice cooks in kelp stock.