157 recipes. Page 1 of 7
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Little dishes of rice flour and tapioca batter go into the steamer and come out as soft discs, translucent at the rim and opaque white in the middle. This snack from Hue in central Vietnam is topped with dry, crumbly shrimp, toasted in a dry pan until every bit of moisture is gone; any left behind turns soggy on the cake.
Gyeran-ppang, the egg bread sold at Korean street stalls, adapts neatly to a muffin tin: a lightly sweet batter fills each cup halfway, and a whole egg cracked on top bakes into it as the batter rises around it. Chopped ham and scallions add a salty, savory layer to the sweet bread.
The first thing you taste is ground perilla seed (deulkkae), which clings to the sprouts in a pale, nutty coating. The sprouts steam in a little water under a lid rather than boiling, so they stay crunchy and hold less water.
Flying fish roe, stir-fried kimchi and diced yellow pickled radish sit in sections over rice, scattered with crushed seasoned laver and scallion. The rice is tossed with sesame oil and butter first for a gloss. Left on hot rice, the roe goes slack and the laver soggy, and the bowl is mixed the moment it is ready.
Dried bottle gourd strips are thin slices of the gourd's inner flesh, and they need more than 30 minutes of soaking to turn chewy again. They cook in perilla oil, and the ground perilla seed goes in while a little liquid remains, soaking it up and clinging to the strips as a thick coating. It is a mild namul to set beside more strongly seasoned banchan.
Instead of broth, these small boiled dumplings get a tangy dressing of soy sauce, vinegar and chili oil that clings to their thin wrappers. Mini dumplings tear easily, so the sauce is spooned on top and the dumplings are turned gently rather than tossed.
Inner skirt has coarse muscle fibers with tough sinew running between them, so the first job is snipping that sinew out with scissors and slicing across the grain. Its beefy flavor is strong enough that the soy marinade gets only 20 minutes. Halved garlic cloves cook slowly in the pan first, then the same pan goes to high heat for a quick sear of the beef, and the garlic is plated alongside.
The potatoes are baked whole in their skins, not boiled, and the flesh is scooped out and mashed into the soup, keeping the toasty taste of a baked potato. Some of the crisp bacon and cheddar is held back to go on top of each bowl with sliced scallions.
Long green onions cut to the length of the pan form the base layer here, with squid, shrimp and mussel meat on top and only enough thin batter to fill the gaps. Unlike a pajeon where batter covers everything, the scallions carry the structure, and each slice shows stacked layers of onion and shellfish.
The eggplant is sauteed in oil for a few minutes before the sauce goes in. Dropped straight into the liquid, it would release water and thin the seasoning. Any braising liquid left over can go into bibimbap.
Salting decides the texture of this napa cabbage kimchi: under-salted leaves weep liquid and turn mushy during fermentation, while over-salted ones bury the seasoning. Blooming the gochugaru in sweet rice paste before the fish sauce goes in gives a heavy paste that clings to each leaf instead of sliding off. Spread it thinly between the layers, since too much filling makes the kimchi salty and soft. Fresh-tasting at first, it grows deeper and tangier after about a week, and well-soured kimchi is the one to use for kimchi-jjigae or stir-fried kimchi.
Pork stock thickened lightly with tapioca starch carries crab meat, thick chewy banh canh noodles, and soft curds of egg in this southern Vietnamese soup. The broth should just coat the back of a spoon, and it keeps thickening after the heat is off, so a splash of hot stock at the end loosens it.
The sauce has no cream, just butter and starchy pasta water tossed hard until they come together, and the sourness of kimchi plus a squeeze of lemon keeps it lighter than most garlic butter pastas. Sliced garlic fries alongside the kimchi so both flavors spread through the fat, and chopped scallion is scattered over after the heat is off.
Napa cabbage seared hard on its cut sides turns smoky-sweet on the surface while the core stays crisp. Gamtae, a fine, hair-like Korean seaweed sold in dried sheets, is crumbled over the warm wedges for a delicate ocean aroma, and the salad is best eaten while the cabbage is still warm and the seaweed still crackles.
Cooked, chopped pork and liver are mixed with rice and packed into casing, giving a link that eats more like moist meat stuffing than a springy raw-meat sausage. A little of the broth from the long simmer brings the filling together; too much turns it into porridge. Cleaned, food-grade salted hog casings work best filled loosely, because tight links split during the final gentle poach. With no curing salt or drying stage, boudin stays a fresh sausage that belongs in the refrigerator and gets eaten within two days.
Crisp at the edges and custard-soft in the middle, these small cup-shaped pancakes come from Vung Tau on Vietnam's southern coast. Coconut milk in the rice batter adds a gentle richness, and shrimp and scallion placed on top cook with the batter before it sets. They are wrapped in lettuce or herbs and dipped in a fish sauce and sugar mix.
Cheongyang peppers, the hottest everyday chili in Korea, carry this raw soy dressing, and keeping or scraping out their seeds sets how sharp it gets. The tofu needs a hot pan and high heat until the underside turns deep brown; drop the heat and the tofu releases water and steams, losing the contrast between crust and soft center.
Clam meat, julienned radish and shiitake cook on top of rice in kombu water, and the finished pot gets mixed with a soy, sesame oil and scallion sauce at the table. The radish steams over the rice and sweetens it, and cutting it thin (0.3 cm) lets it finish at the same time as the rice. The soaked rice has to drain well, since the kombu water is measured for rice without surface water. The clams go on only near the end so they stay plump.
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.
Each cup of the takoyaki pan gets octopus plus chopped kimchi and scallion. Sauce, mayonnaise, and bonito flakes still go on top as usual, but the kimchi comes through underneath, sour and hot.
Two kinds of salt meet in each shell here: the briny juice of the hard clam and the fermented saltiness of doenjang. That is why the paste goes on thin enough to let the clam meat show through; doenjang varies in saltiness from brand to brand, and a heavy coat buries the shellfish. Over high heat the doenjang surface scorches lightly and turns toasty, and the moment the liquid in the shell bubbles, the clams come off. Another minute and the meat turns tough.
Dough made from flour and glutinous rice flour is stretched by hand into short, flat pieces and dropped straight into the simmering pot. These dago are kept short rather than pulled into long, even noodles so a spoonful can hold them together with burdock, taro and carrot. The broth comes from dried shiitake soaking liquid and dried sardines, seasoned with pale usukuchi soy sauce.
The batter is pancake mix stirred loosely with cold water. Scallions go into the pan first, then squid, shrimp and thin slices of red chili, and the batter is poured over; the scallions touching the oil turn sweet and give off the smell that makes pajeon what it is. It comes to the table with makgeolli.
Despite the name, gamja-jjim is not steamed: potato cubes simmer in soy sauce, sugar and garlic until almost no liquid is left and a glossy film coats each piece. Cubes cut to one size take the seasoning to the center at the same pace, and no piece ends up bland inside. Scallions and a little sesame oil finish it with a fresh, nutty note.