1421 recipes. Page 49 of 60
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A light dusting of flour holds moisture in the cut crab and gives the sweet-salty soy glaze something to grip, and it ends up on your fingers as you work through the shells. Buy the crabs live and clean them just before cooking for firm, springy meat; frozen crab loses water as it thaws and turns soft.
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.
The potatoes are cut 0.7 cm thick, enough to hold their shape while their edges fray slightly and give the clear pollack broth a little body. Wring the pollack shreds hard before toasting them, or they steam instead of turning nutty.
Summer yeolmu, young radish greens, leaves a faint bitterness at the end of each spoonful of doenjang broth. It is best while the stems still crunch, so it does not simmer for long.
Rolled around in a soy, sugar and mirin braise, the small quail eggs brown evenly and take on salt almost to the yolk. Added once the liquid has reduced by about half, the shishito peppers soften without bursting and keep their green, slightly grassy taste. A couple of toothpick holes in each pepper let the sauce inside and keep the skins from splitting. The braise should end with a little syrupy liquid still in the pot rather than a dry pan, giving each egg a shiny coat. Refrigerated, it keeps for three to four days as a ready side dish.
A shallow slit in each shishito pepper (kkwarigochu) lets the soy and oyster sauce seep inside and keeps the peppers from bursting in the pan. The chicken tenderloin they cook with has almost no fat and a mild, clean taste.
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.
Pollock left on racks in Gangwon-do through the winter, freezing and thawing over and over until it dries, becomes hwangtae. Its chewy strips and wisps of soft egg end up in the same spoonful of this clear soup, which is made for hangovers and for ordinary breakfasts alike.
No meat and no anchovy go into this stew, only vegetable stock. To give the broth some aroma, the onion and oyster mushrooms are fried in sesame oil first. The lotus root cooks just until a chopstick slides in, and the perilla powder goes in at the very end for a brief warm-through over low heat. Boiled for long, perilla turns chalky rather than nutty.
Squid and shishito peppers end up coated in a spicy glaze of soy sauce, gochujang and gochugaru, with just enough sauce left in the pan to spoon over rice. The squid gets only a short, hot reduction, since it turns rubbery the longer it simmers; once the edges curl and turn white, it is nearly there. Residual heat keeps cooking it, which is the reason to stir in the sesame oil off the heat and plate right away.
The shishito peppers stay in the oil until a few dark blisters appear on the skins, which is where their slightly bitter aroma comes from. The tiny anchovies are toasted separately in a dry pan beforehand until crumbly, and they only rejoin the peppers when the heat is lowered and the syrup goes in.
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.
The pollack shreds are not soaked, only swished briefly in cold water. A long soak would wash their savoriness away.
With no chili flakes and no doenjang, just beef stock seasoned with soup soy sauce and salt, the broth stays clear. The tofu is nudged in with a ladle and left unstirred for five minutes to soak up the stock; browning it lightly in a pan first keeps a toasty surface even in the broth.
Tofu and shishito peppers carry this meatless braise, and the salty, mildly spicy sauce that remains is meant to be mixed into rice. The tofu is basted with a spoon rather than flipped, so the slices stay neat and square to the end. Onion cut on the thick side keeps its shape through the braise and adds a bit of bite. Patting the tofu dry one more time just before it hits the pan cuts down on spattering oil.
Instead of being stirred into liquid, the doenjang (Korean soybean paste) is fried at the edge of the pan in the fat from the pork, which cooks off its pasty smell, before the blanched cauliflower goes in. There is no broth at all, and the heat goes off while the cauliflower stems still have a little firmness.
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.
Marsh clams from the Seomjin River area around Hadong are tiny, so the pleasure lies in the broth: pale and clear, yet surprisingly full-tasting. Garlic chives go in just before the heat is cut, wilting only enough to stay green and fragrant. When lifting the clams out of their soaking water, scoop from the top so the sand at the bottom stays behind.
Instead of being stir-fried, shishito-style peppers are dusted with a thin layer of flour and steamed, which keeps their mild sweetness and soft bite. During steaming the white coating turns translucent, forming a thin film that the dressing of soy sauce, gochugaru, garlic and sesame oil clings to.
Kohlrabi is firm and a little sweet, and even stir-fried it still crunches between pieces of springy shrimp. The red bell pepper is there more for color than flavor.
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.
Because the eel is poached first and picked off the bone, the soup can be eaten by the spoonful without worrying about bones. Koreans make a point of eating it in the hottest stretch of summer, and some add perilla seed powder or extra chili to change the broth.
The firm, slightly chewy flesh of half-dried pollock holds together through a long spicy braise and takes the seasoning all the way in. Gochugaru and gochujang together give the sauce body and a deep red color, and a spoonful of syrup added near the end gives it shine. Basting two or three times beats flipping, which only tears the fish. When the sauce turns thick and sticks to the pollock, it is ready to serve with the radish and a bowl of rice.
The ingredients match the usual boiled-and-dressed soybean sprout side dish, but here the sprouts go straight into an oiled pan and pick up a faint smoky note. The lid never goes on. Covering the pan traps steam, which turns the cooking into steaming and keeps the raw, beany smell in.