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The abalone flesh is stir-fried in butter with garlic scapes, while the innards cut away from it get a light toss in soy sauce and go on top of rice. Past a minute the flesh turns tough; it spends only about 45 seconds in the pan.
Garlic scapes stay tough if they go into the pan raw. So they spend just 30 seconds in boiling water, get rinsed in cold water right away, and then cook with the gochujang sauce in a pan for about 3 minutes. Done, they bend easily but still snap when you bite.
With only half a tablespoon of gochujang against soy sauce and oyster sauce, this braise leans salty and savory rather than red and fiery. That small spoonful of chili paste has to dissolve fully into the soy and oyster sauce, or the pork and scapes end up unevenly seasoned. Lean pork tenderloin, sliced across the grain about 1 cm thick, stays tender through a short simmer while its juices enrich the sauce. Adding the garlic scapes only after the liquid has dropped by half lets them soak up that sauce and still keep their crunch and mild, sharp bite. Left too long they turn stringy, which is why the pan comes off the heat with a spoonful of glossy sauce left for the rice.
Fruit sweetness from ground pear and onion, the base of the chili paste, cushions the heat. The sharp, prickly garlic smell of the scapes survives fermentation and stays in the kimchi alongside their snap. Thirty minutes in coarse salt is just enough for the stalks to bend a little, which lets the thick paste wrap around them. A short two-hour start at room temperature comes before the fridge, and the flavor turns riper after about two days.
Bacon cooked slowly over low heat gives up smoky fat, and that fat becomes the base for stir-frying the garlic scapes, with little or no extra oil needed. Since bacon is already salty, the soy sauce is scaled back to taste, and a spoonful of syrup leaves a thin glossy coat that balances the salt with sweetness.
The small anchovies are toasted in a dry pan and set aside, while the garlic scapes cook first in the soy glaze; the fish only returns for the last couple of minutes so it stays crisp-chewy instead of hard. Scapes are never blanched, which keeps them bright green with a snap at the center.
Unlike whole-garlic jangajji, which waits for a cooled brine, garlic scapes get the brine while it is still boiling. That heat lightly cooks the surface, so each 4 cm piece snaps cleanly when bitten. Whole peppercorns slowly release a warm, spicy aroma into the liquid as the jar ages. The scapes are edible the next day, though day three is when the seasoning reaches the center and the crunch is still intact.
Garlic scapes taste of garlic without the sharp bite of the cloves, more sweet than pungent, and even people who shy away from garlic tend to keep reaching for them. Their season runs from spring into early summer, when the stalks are at their most tender.
Garlic scapes are crisp with a slight chew, which gives lean chicken breast something to bite against. Oyster sauce and soy leave everything glossy.
Clam meat is mixed among crisp, oyster-sauce-glazed garlic scapes, and since the clams are barely more than warmed through, they stay plump and tender.