42 recipes. Page 2 of 2
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Buckwheat dough rolled between the palms into thin strands shaped like little loach fish cooks gently in a dashi full of vegetables. Bound with egg and hot water, the dough should be as soft as an earlobe without sticking badly to the hands. Burdock, carrot, kabocha, napa cabbage, shiitake and chikuwa fish cake share the pot, which holds far more than a plain flour-dumpling soup.
The broth, not the vegetables, carries this water kimchi: it is meant to be spooned up and sipped cold. Gochugaru is steeped in a cheesecloth bundle so the water turns clear red without powder clouding it. Radish and napa cabbage are sliced into thin flat squares and salted only briefly, so they keep some crunch in the liquid. A day at room temperature brings a gentle tang, and a few more days in the fridge round it out. A spoonful next to spicy dishes cools the mouth, and in summer it drinks almost like naengmyeon broth.
Napa cabbage and onion line the bottom of the pot, beef goes on top, minari (Korean water parsley) rings the edge, and the octopus sits highest of all. When its legs curl up and turn bright red, the heat goes off at once and everything is ladled out with the broth.
Skipping the usual long salting, raw napa cabbage goes straight into the chili seasoning and the leaves stay crunchy, cool, and full of juice. Green plum syrup brings a rounded sweetness that fermentation would otherwise supply, softening the salt of the anchovy sauce. Tossing stops as soon as the red paste coats the leaves evenly, because any water left on the cabbage, or too much mixing, thins the seasoning.
Sumo wrestlers ate this hot pot together in their stables, which explains how much goes into a single pot: chicken thigh, chicken meatballs, napa cabbage, mizuna, shiitake, soft tofu, fried tofu and kuzukiri noodles. The broth is chicken stock with grated garlic and ginger, and people help themselves to whatever is done while the rest keeps simmering.
Before any kimchi paste is spread on, napa cabbage soaks for 6 to 8 hours in sea salt dissolved in kelp and dried shiitake stock that has been cooled completely. Most of the dry salt is scattered on the thick stems, and when a stem bends smoothly without snapping, the salting is done.
Napa cabbage lines the bottom of a wide hot pot, and tofu, shiitake and marinated beef are laid in a ring around the edge, giving the pot its finished look before it ever heats. The kelp broth, seasoned with soup soy sauce and no chili, stays clear, and the pot is served bubbling for everyone to ladle from.
The Thai name translates roughly as bland soup, and next to spicy dishes like som tam or tom yum that is exactly its job: a gentle, clear broth that gives the palate a rest. It is still seasoned, with fish sauce, and the pork meatballs carry nothing but white pepper so the meat tastes like itself. Silken tofu, napa cabbage, and glass noodles fill out the bowl.
Horse mackerel, cut in half on the bone, simmers with napa cabbage in a thin, strained doenjang broth in this Jeju soup. The pieces are left alone because stirring breaks the flesh, and the soup keeps cooking past the point where the cabbage softens until the fish is opaque at the center.
Gochujang, chili flakes and soy sauce dissolve into beef bone broth, turning the pot red and heavy. Napa cabbage, onion and oyster mushrooms line the bottom with the intestine and tripe piled on top, and as the vegetables soften underneath they sweeten the broth.
Miso is spread thickly around the inside rim of the pot like a bank of earth, and it gets scraped into the broth a little at a time as the pot simmers. Oysters release salty juices of their own, which is why the miso never goes in all at once.
There is no chili flake or gochujang anywhere in this pot. Big dumplings cook in a clear anchovy and kelp stock flavored by shiitake, oyster mushrooms and napa cabbage, and any seasoning still needed at the end comes from salt alone so the broth stays pale. Some people finish the leftover broth with a scoop of rice.
Napa cabbage lines the bottom of the pot, and kimchi, blanched beef, tofu, enoki and frozen dumplings are arranged around it in separate blocks of color before anchovy stock with gochujang is poured over. A drop of perilla oil goes on just before it reaches the table.
A curled tentacle and a white surface do not prove the thickest part of the octopus is cooked. Instead of a fixed time, this recipe relies on a thermometer and keeps the pot going until the center has held at 75°C or more for over a minute.
The water used to soak the dried neungi mushrooms is not poured away; it becomes part of the hot pot broth. So much of the aroma has already moved into that water that the broth smells deeply of mushroom without any meat at all.
Each thin slice of beef is held with chopsticks and swished through gently simmering dashi for a few seconds. The name comes from the sound of that swishing. As the napa cabbage, tofu, shiitake and bok choy cook, their flavor builds up in the broth, which gets richer toward the end of the meal, and the last of it takes rice or udon.
This royal court hot pot was once served in a special vessel with burning charcoal in its center; here an ordinary hot pot does the job. Meatballs of beef and tofu go in the middle, and shiitake, carrot and napa cabbage are arranged around them in separate sections. The egg never touches the broth. Yolk and white are fried into separate thin sheets, sliced, and laid on top in yellow and white strips.
Beef brisket is browned in sesame oil, then water and napa cabbage go in. Guk-ganjang, the Korean soy sauce for soups, turns the broth a clear light brown, and a thin film of sesame oil from the beef floats on top with a nutty smell. The stems go in before the leaves; the stems keep a little bite while the leaves turn soft and full of broth.