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In the Noto area of Ishikawa, this root vegetable side dish is made for New Year and other special occasions. Flattened soybeans, burdock, and fried tofu simmer in sweetened soy, while daikon and carrot strips are blanched separately and folded in afterward, and each keeps its own texture. Vinegar layered over the soy seasoning puts it somewhere between a simmered dish and a dressed salad.
Whole yellow croaker spends two days buried in sea salt in the fridge, then gets a coat of garlic, ginger, chili flakes and cheongju (clear rice wine) and goes back to the fridge for 5 to 7 days. Unlike jeotgal left to ferment at room temperature for a long time, every stage here happens in the fridge. The seasoning has to reach inside the belly as well as the skin, otherwise the flesh near the bone stays plain. Small pieces go with plain rice or into kimchi jjigae.
A modest scoop of rice gets its toppings arranged to taste: shredded chicken, thin egg strips, simmered shiitake, green beans, miso-pickled papaya, scallion, citrus peel, and nori. Hot chicken-bone broth is then poured over generously, and the bowl is eaten lightly, almost like soup. On Amami, the earliest form resembled seasoned chicken rice, and the custom of pouring broth over it spread in the Showa era and became standard. The bones simmer with ginger for an hour, and the tenderloin is poached in that same broth, which ties the meat and the soup together.
A splash of cheongju (Korean rice wine) under a lid opens the clams, then butter goes in, and the clam juices and butter run together into a salty sauce in the bottom of the pan. Whatever is left gets mopped up with bread. The clams bring their own salt, so the soy sauce stops at a teaspoon, and any clam that stays shut is thrown out.
Fatty chicken skin is fried twice until it snaps like a cracker. At 170°C the fat inside renders out; a short second dip in oil raised to 185°C sets the surface hard. Fried twice, the skin stays crisp for a good while even after it cools.
Sesame oil is rubbed into the flour first and the dough is folded and rolled twice, so a fried yakgwa breaks open in layers. It fries low until cooked through, then the oil goes up to crisp the outside, and the pastries sit in honey and cinnamon syrup for two hours or more. Ginger juice in the dough leaves a slight bite after the sweetness.
Dokdo shrimp are sweet enough that a splash of rice wine to take off any off odor is the only seasoning they get. They cook briefly on a bed of coarse salt under a lid, and the heads, pulled off, are stir-fried in butter as a second small dish.
In this clam soup the radish is eaten as eagerly as the clams. It simmers for about seven minutes before the white clams and a spoonful of cheongju (clear rice wine) go in, then softens as it soaks up their broth. Salt is added only in pinches, after tasting.
The pollock jeon on Korean holiday tables is usually made from frozen fillets. Thawed pollock gives off more water than you would expect, and pressing it well with paper towels is what lets the egg coating stick.
Clams and seaweed go into a base broth of simmered radish, and with no meat in the pot, the clams carry the flavor. Their briny savoriness and the sea smell of the miyeok layer up in the same pot.
The female crabs, full of roe and tomalley, steam belly-up so that everything inside the top shell stays there instead of leaking into the pot. The soy, oligosaccharide syrup and rice wine mixture is only spooned over the shells, nothing like a heavy braising sauce. Past 15 to 20 minutes, the meat starts to fall apart into mush.
Bracken fern, usually served as a seasoned namul, goes into a sweet-sour soy brine in this recipe, and its boiled stems stay springy and chewy with a nutty flavor that builds as you chew. Vinegar clears away the fern's earthy smell for a clean finish, while dried chili and garlic add a gentle warmth. Once cooled, the jar rests refrigerated for about 2 days before eating.
In Kagawa, fresh udon goes straight into the loach and miso soup, so it eats as both soup and a bowl of noodles, with burdock, eggplant, taro and fried tofu in the pot too. The loach is never self-caught: only farmed fish that a licensed supplier has professionally purged.
Sweet crab meat and bright lemon ride on a garlic-scented olive oil sauce that stays clean rather than greasy. Butter and starchy pasta water emulsify the oil into a thin coating on the spaghetti, while a splash of cheongju, Korean rice wine, takes the fishy edge off the crab. Crab picked fresh from whole blue crabs tastes noticeably sweeter than frozen meat.
Daikon, carrot, lotus root, shiitake, fried tofu, burdock and koya-dofu (freeze-dried tofu) are cooked in three separate batches before meeting one sweet rice-vinegar dressing. Each group keeps its own texture: crunchy lotus root and burdock, tender daikon, and koya-dofu that holds stock like a sponge. Spreading the cooked pieces in a sieve until they stop dripping keeps the vinegar dressing from turning thin. The simmered koya-dofu cools in the sieve on its own, untouched: pressing it while hot would break it and squeeze out the stock it absorbed. White sesame and fine threads of yuzu peel are scattered on top, adding toastiness and a citrus lift.
Grilled amago simmers slowly in hojicha, soy sauce, mirin, sake, and sugar until even its fine bones turn soft. The fish is a red-spotted trout of the salmon family, and this way of cooking it comes from the Yoshino and Uda areas of Nara. Raw freshwater fish can carry parasites and contaminants. Only dressed, farmed, cooking-grade amago from a licensed supplier is used here, never fish you caught yourself.
Soft rice cakes are folded through cabbage that has simmered in sake, mirin, soy sauce, and kombu noodle sauce until the ribs turn tender, leaving a salty, lightly sweet glaze on every piece. The dish belongs to the Ose district of Koriyama in Fukushima, where farm households grew their own rice and cabbage and made it year-round as a meal or a filling snack.
The liquor the hard clams release as they open is the base of the sauce here; no stock goes in. A little soy and oyster sauce is added, and the chives are cooked only until they wilt, so they are still bright green on the plate.
Sweetfish, a summer river fish with a delicate fragrance, is grilled under a thin scatter of coarse salt and no other seasoning. Left in, the innards give a bitter edge; taken out, the fish turns much milder. The tail and fins, which scorch before the body, get a thicker coat of salt.
A generous handful of minari, Korean water parsley, goes into this clam broth, and its fresh green smell reaches you before the spoon does. There is no separate stock: the clams and sliced garlic simply start in cold water.
Each spoonful brings up chewy webfoot octopus (jjukkumi) together with tofu that has soaked up the red broth. The octopus turns rubbery if it boils long, so the vegetable broth is finished first and the octopus gets only a few minutes in it.
Pomfret has thin, tender flesh that slips off the bone easily once the whole steamed fish reaches the table. Ginger and green onion are split into two rounds: the first steams with the fish to cut any fishiness, and the second goes on with the warm soy and rice wine sauce for fresh aroma. That sauce is mild and barely salty, letting the clean taste of the fish lead.
Salt pulls water out of raw oysters and tightens the flesh. After two to three days of cold curing they turn firm, and the red seasoning liquid soaks right through. The result tastes denser and saltier than a fresh oyster, closer to a seasoning than a side dish. Chili flakes give it the red color and a spicy aroma, and the acidity of plum syrup holds back the fishy smell that rises during curing. A small spoonful goes a long way over warm rice, and a little folded into napa cabbage kimchi filling adds an oyster savoriness that fish sauce alone lacks. The washed oysters are blotted dry before mixing, because leftover water thins the paste and softens the flesh.
Neat blocks of pink fish soboro, green scallion, and orange mandarin peel cover the white shirataki noodles, putting four colors on one plate. It is a celebration dish from Uwajima in Ehime, and the noodles underneath are simmered in dashi, mirin, and light soy sauce until no liquid remains.