As sliced duck grills with onion, the fat that melts out mixes with the gochujang marinade and pools in the pan as a sweet, spicy sauce. Spooning it back over the meat while it cooks is what gives the surface its shine. Wrapped in perilla leaves, each bite is noticeably less fiery.
Only coarse salt and black pepper season the duck itself; the flavor partners come at the table, where slices are wrapped in perilla leaves with ssamjang, a fermented soybean and chili paste. Cooked from a cold pan in its own fat, the skin turns hard and crackly.
Squid and pork belly share one gochujang marinade, but only the pork goes into the pan at first. After five or six minutes it has given up its fat and the sauce has turned glossy; the squid follows and cooks in three or four, soaking up pork-enriched sauce as it goes.
White fish is blended smooth with coconut milk, egg white and red curry paste, spread in a thin strip on banana leaves, folded up and grilled on both sides. While the leaf edges char, the paste inside sets like a firm custard and takes on a faint smokiness. In Malaysia and Singapore it is eaten with rice or as a snack on its own.
Paneer marinated in yogurt with turmeric and garam masala goes onto skewers with bell pepper and onion and over high heat, just until the edges char. A fresh Indian cheese, it holds its shape on the grill instead of melting. In India it is served as an appetizer with mint chutney.
This is Peking duck without the restaurant setup: no hanging the bird, just a rack in a home oven. The skin needs to dry overnight in the fridge, so it starts the day before, and the carved duck is wrapped in thin pancakes with cucumber, scallion and hoisin. Home ovens vary, so don't count on the paper-thin crackling of a restaurant duck.
A sauce of yuja cheong (Korean citron marmalade) and soy sauce, brushed into the gills of fresh shiitake caps and left for ten minutes, seeps between the folds and stays on after grilling as a sour-salty glaze.
King oyster mushrooms stay firm and chewy even when cooked, enough to stand in for meat on the plate. A shallow crosshatch on the long cut faces gives the butter soy sauce somewhere to cling as it thickens. Wipe the mushrooms with a damp paper towel instead of washing them.
King oyster mushrooms sliced 0.7 cm thick lengthwise are laid in butter in a single layer and browned on both sides, and only then does the soy glaze go in around the edge of the pan to reduce for about a minute. Finished with green onion and sesame, the salty butter-soy flavor works next to rice or with drinks.
Doenjang, Korean fermented soybean paste, is stirred into melted unsalted butter with garlic and lemon juice, brushed over large shrimp and grilled in a very hot grill pan. The paste already brings plenty of salt, which is why the butter is unsalted and any extra salt waits until the cooked shrimp have been tasted.
The heads and part of the shells stay on these medium shrimp. Tossed for ten minutes with olive oil, rosemary, thyme and garlic, they cook for two minutes a side on a thin layer of coarse salt in a very hot pan, and the shells that were left on turn crisp.
A heavy pan holds a 1 cm layer of coarse salt, 300 g of it, heated under the lid before the shell-on shrimp go on top and the lid closes again. Melted butter is brushed onto the shells only after the shrimp have steamed through and been lifted off the salt, and the used salt is thrown out.
Chuck flap is so well marbled that coarse salt, pepper and a quick, hard sear are all it takes, and it stays juicy. While the steak rests, asparagus goes into the same pan and picks up the beef fat and butter left behind.
Spanish mackerel belongs to the mackerel family yet smells less fishy and has softer flesh. After ten minutes under salt and pepper, it gets a dusting of flour shaken off until the grain of the fish shows through, then goes into an oiled pan over medium heat.
Pork belly goes into a dry pan and cooks in its own fat, turned just once after the first side browns. Thin slices of garlic then fry in the rendered fat, and the meat, cut into bites with scissors, is wrapped in lettuce with the garlic, ssamjang (a soybean and chili paste), green onion and chili pepper.
On a flat, thin fish like tongue sole, the chili marinade sits evenly on the surface and seasons the flesh quickly. Maesil cheong, a green plum syrup, takes the pasty edge off the gochujang and, with the sugar, caramelizes into a glossy brown coating.
The thin coat of olive oil over the salted tenderloin is there to keep the coarse salt from falling off into the pan. Tenderloin is lean, so it gets basted at the end with butter infused with garlic and rosemary, and the lemon is squeezed over sparingly, right before eating.
Thin beef, whether cut for galbi or bulgogi, spends at least an hour in a soy sauce and pear juice marinade and then needs only three to four minutes in total on a very hot grill. In that short time the marinade cooks down onto the surface into a glossy brown.
Beef, bell pepper and onion alternate on soy-marinated skewers that are turned every two minutes for six to eight minutes. By the time the pepper edges are lightly charred, the glaze has reduced to a shine. They rest until the handles are cool enough to pick up.
Songhwa mushrooms get a thin coat of perilla oil and soy sauce, then a sprinkle of ground perilla seed just before the heat goes off, layering the same nutty aroma twice. Their caps are thick, and generous slices hold together in the pan.
Sliced sora, a Korean sea snail, stays chewy, with the gochujang sauce cooked right down onto it and no liquid left in the pan. A weak flame lets water pool and turns it into a stir-fry, so the pan goes on high. Trim off the tough innard end while slicing.
Big chunks of pork belly and neck are fixed on a long metal spit and turned for hours over charcoal. A marinade of orange juice, coriander seed, oregano and rosemary gives the pork a citrus and herb aroma. It needs an outdoor rotisserie grill and a spit with securing forks; small wooden skewers in a pan do not reproduce it. Wind, the amount of charcoal and the size of the chunks can push the cook past three hours, and the fire should be lit with plenty of time in hand.
Chicken thigh pieces cook skin side down under a lid until the fat runs and the edges darken. Shallow cuts in the thick parts, no deeper than half the thickness, let the marinade in without the meat splitting open.
Long fillets of cutlassfish are wound in a spiral around bamboo sticks and turned over charcoal, brushed again and again with a soy, sugar, sake and ginger glaze until it builds into a dark lacquer. The strips are trimmed to an even width and wound with their edges slightly overlapping so they do not loosen as the stick turns. Uwajima in Ehime credits the dish to an old fishmonger who came up with it in 1987; because it is so fiddly, people mostly eat it at izakaya and local fish-cake shops rather than at home. A last brush of mirin gives the final shine. To eat, the fish is slid off the hot bamboo and looked over for any stray bones.