Cuttlefish is thicker and denser than ordinary squid, so the inside of the body gets a deep crosshatch before it hits the pan, and the garlic butter seeps into those cuts as it cooks. A little chopped cheongyang chili, a hot Korean green pepper, leaves a faint kick at the end of the butter.
Deep crosshatch scoring makes the cuttlefish curl open like a flower over high heat, and every gap fills with a glossy red gochujang glaze.
Garaetteok, the long cylinder-shaped Korean rice cake, turns golden and firm outside and stays stretchy inside when rolled around in butter in a pan. A thin coat of soy sauce and rice syrup goes on next, then sesame salt and crumbled seaweed.
Scallops come off the heat when the outside is dark brown and the center still slightly translucent. Over high heat that takes 1 to 2 minutes a side, and after the flip, butter and minced garlic go into the pan and are spooned over the top.
When a scallop on the grill pops open, a little salty liquor collects in the bottom shell. The top shell comes off, and butter and minced garlic go straight into that liquor to bubble a while longer. Mozzarella covers only about half of each scallop. Cover it all and the cheese is all you taste.
Each sheet of laver is brushed thinly with sesame oil, sprinkled with salt, and laid in a pan over low heat, one at a time. Within about ten seconds the dark sheet turns bright green and the edges curl a little, and that is the moment to flip it. Brown spots mean it has already gone too far, and the next sheet gets a lower flame.
Chicken thighs go into a gochujang marinade, ideally overnight. On the day, the skin side is pressed into the pan first to render the fat, then the pieces are flipped and covered so the thick meat cooks through. The glaze only turns glossy at the very end, in the last 2 minutes over high heat with the lid off.
Pear juice makes up close to half of the marinade for these gochujang pork ribs. It is what makes them tender, and it is also why they scorch so easily. The ribs marinate for an hour or two, cook over medium heat, and get the leftover sauce brushed on only at the very end.
Autumn mackerel needs nothing but salt, and that is down to its fat. The fat under the skin melts out and does the frying itself. Grated radish mixed with soy sauce sits alongside. If a pan feels like a chore, an air fryer at 180°C for 15 minutes works too.
Mackerel is cut into pieces, brushed with gochujang, soy sauce and ginger juice, and left for 30 minutes before it cooks. Skin side down, the pieces stay untouched for 4 to 5 minutes until the edges set red. Any piece sitting where the sauce starts to blacken gets moved aside.
With beef intestines, the prep takes more work than the grilling. They are rubbed with coarse salt and flour, rinsed and briefly blanched to get rid of the smell, then cooked in a dry pan in nothing but their own rendered fat. Garlic chives go on the side, and soju usually goes with it.
Small horse mackerel go straight from the grill into sanbaizu, a sweet-sour mix of vinegar, sugar, soy sauce, and dashi, and the seasoning soaks in while the fish is still hot. The dish comes from Kagawa on the Seto Inland Sea, where people who helped haul beach seine nets were once given small mackerel to take home. Its clean acidity suited hot days, and it turned up at summer festivals alongside drinks. Because the fish are grilled whole, the thickest part of the body has to be fully cooked. For children and older eaters, pick the flesh off the bones, which the vinegar does not always soften, and keep the fish refrigerated despite the acid.
Salted and dried yellow corvina has dense, concentrated flesh that grills up chewy and deeply savory, with no extra salt needed. A 10-minute soak in rice-rinsing water takes the edge off the saltiness; leaving it longer washes out flavor too. It is salty enough that a small piece carries a whole bowl of rice.
Flounder fillets are brushed with soy sauce mixed with yuja-cheong, a Korean citron marmalade, so the salty glaze carries a bright citrus note. The fillets are thin and break easily; turn them once, in one go, with a wide spatula. If your yuja-cheong is very sweet, add a little more soy.
Scallops patted bone dry are sprinkled with coarse salt, seared hard, and finished with a few spoonfuls of basting butter. The yuzu marmalade and lemon sauce goes on after the heat is off. Bite in and you hit grains of coarse salt, with yuzu coming through between them.
Shrimp and squid are brushed with a thin layer of doenjang sauce and grilled. There is only half a tablespoon of gochujang in it, so it tastes more savory than hot. You know it is done by smell: once the sauce turns deep brown and smells toasty, it comes off the heat, and a little longer brings a burnt note.
Squid, shrimp, scallops and clams all cook at different speeds, so even on one grill each comes off on its own schedule. The clams are lifted out as soon as they open, juices and all. With nothing but olive oil, salt, pepper and lemon on them, any overcooked, rubbery piece gives itself away.
Pork jowl goes into the pan with no oil at all. Its own fat runs out within moments, and the doenjang marinade sizzles in it and browns onto the meat. The doenjang starts at a single tablespoon and goes up only after tasting.
Green onion cut into thick 5 cm lengths cooks beside the pork jowl, left mostly alone and then charred lightly over high heat at the end. The pork gets only 15 minutes in the soy marinade; past 20, the salt works too far into the meat.
In the Iya area of Tokushima, river trout, tofu, konjac and vegetables were traditionally cooked over a layer of sweet miso on a heated flat stone called a hirara. Here a lidded electric griddle stands in for the stone, and chicken thigh, potatoes and shiitake join the trout, enough for four on one plate.
A dried magnolia leaf serves as the plate: Hida-style miso is spread on it with sliced leek and shiitake and warmed over low heat until it bubbles. The leeks lose their sharpness and the mushrooms soften in the salty miso, which is eaten a little at a time over rice or alongside drinks. The leaf itself is only a cooking surface and stays on the plate.
The mussels start with two tablespoons of white wine and a lid, steaming for about 2 minutes. Only the opened ones are set aside; butter and garlic melt into the liquid left in the pan, and the mussels go back in for 2 or 3 minutes of tossing. Half a lemon is squeezed over once the heat is off.
Whole sea bream, turban shells, squid and shrimp are salted and roasted under a tight lid in a horaku, an earthenware pot lined with heat-proof gravel and pine needles, with no water added. An Imabari specialty in Ehime, it is tied by tradition to the victory feasts of the Murakami naval forces of the Muromachi period and is also called pirate cuisine. Hard-boiled eggs, sweet potato and ginkgo nuts are tucked around the fish, and the whole pot comes to the table for five. If the pine scent turns burnt or the smoke thickens, the heat comes down at once. To keep the cold pot from cracking, it starts on low heat before the covered roast.
The hwangtae, a Korean dried pollack, is not soaked; it is only dampened front and back with wet hands, which keeps it chewy rather than soggy once grilled. The gochujang glaze goes on in several thin layers over low heat, and it is done when the surface turns sticky and glossy.