157 recipes. Page 3 of 7
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Halved Brussels sprouts hold their structure through salting, and each bite gives a firm crunch and a little sweetness. Score the stem ends no deeper than 5 mm or the leaves fall apart, and give strongly bitter sprouts an extra 5 minutes in the brine.
Butter-browned button mushrooms and soy sauce bubbled briefly at the edge of the pan coat thick udon in a salty, nutty glaze. The blanched udon needs a thorough drain, because any water clinging to it thins that sauce. The mushrooms cook until dry and browned at the edges for the same reason, adding meaty depth without leaving liquid in the pan. Hitting the hot metal lets the soy reduce almost instantly, and it has to be stirred into the mushrooms before it scorches. Most of the butter is used for frying; a small piece melted in after the heat is off brings back its aroma and gives the noodles a final gloss.
Jjokpa, a slender Korean green onion, is milder and sweeter than the thick daepa leek and can be dressed raw without much sting. That gentle bite cuts through the fat of grilled pork belly or grilled fish.
The skin should be dry and crisp, the center hot and fluffy, and everything else piled on top: cheddar, bacon, sour cream and chives. Potatoes of similar size finish together, and fork holes on every side let heat and steam move through evenly. Salted butter rubbed over the skin draws out moisture if the potato sits around, so it goes into the oven right away. A crisp shell also lets you fluff the flesh with a fork without tearing through the side. The cheddar comes first, straight onto the hot flesh, so the potato's own heat melts it before the rest is added.
In American Chinese cooking, egg mixed with vegetables is fried into small patties, and a brown gravy made separately is spooned over just before eating. This version has no meat, only mushrooms, bean sprouts, onion and scallion, and it is pan-fried instead of deep-fried, which leaves the edges brown and the middle soft.
Instead of stirring the pollock roe into the eggs, this version lays it in a single line before rolling, so each slice shows an orange stripe in the middle of the yellow. Bite in and the roe pops with salty little beads against the soft egg. Roe varies in saltiness, so there is no added salt, and low heat keeps the omelette from cracking.
Boiled pork and bossam kimchi left over from a bossam meal get a second life here, stir-fried with onion in a gochujang sauce and spooned over rice. The kimchi is chopped coarsely with its stuffing still in it.
Cumin and chili flakes are held back until the final minute so their aroma stays sharp. Before that, thin slices of lamb are spread in one layer in a very hot wok and left untouched for the first 40 seconds to brown.
Flounder fillets are brushed with soy sauce mixed with yuja-cheong, a Korean citron marmalade, so the salty glaze carries a bright citrus note. The fillets are thin and break easily; turn them once, in one go, with a wide spatula. If your yuja-cheong is very sweet, add a little more soy.
Mu-jeon sits on the Chuseok and Seollal jeon platter next to hobak-jeon and gaji-jeon. The radish has to be sliced an even 3 mm: thicker pieces keep a raw, acrid center, and thinner ones break apart in the pan. A little rice flour goes into the batter with the pancake mix, and a soy-vinegar dip comes alongside.
Beets cut into 2 cm cubes get dressed like kkakdugi, the cubed radish kimchi, but this batch is eaten fresh rather than fermented. Whatever is not served right away goes into a lidded container and straight into the fridge at 4°C or below rather than sitting out at room temperature. A kimchi meant for long fermentation needs its own tested ratios and instructions, not this one. The salted cubes are drained well first, because any water they carry thins the paste.
Fresh noodles are laid over kimchi and oyster mushrooms, the lid goes on, and they cook in the steam rising from the kimchi juices. Almost no liquid is left at the end, so it looks like a stir-fry, but the sour, spicy kimchi flavor goes right through each strand.
It looks like radish saengchae, but kohlrabi is juicier and lightly sweet, closer to a pear, which gives the salad a noticeably different taste. The vegetable is the swollen base of a cabbage-family stem, and its fibrous outer layer comes off in a thick peel. Fish sauce supplies savory depth and vinegar a sour lift, both framing the mild sweetness. It turns up most in spring and autumn, when kohlrabi is in season.
Beef and pork cooked with peppers and green onion fill thin pastry half-moons that are sealed with a fork and deep-fried. Because the filling is cooked and cooled first, the pies fry briefly instead of waiting for raw meat to cook through a thick crust. Shortening rubbed into the flour makes a dough that should not be kneaded like bread, and warm filling melts that fat and tears the thin wrapper. A clear border with the air pushed out keeps the seams closed in the oil.
Eggs beaten with fish sauce until foamy hit oil that is almost smoking and puff instantly, forming lacy, crisp edges around a thick, fluffy middle. Thai home cooks slide it straight onto jasmine rice for a meal, and it has little in common with a gently cooked Western omelet.
The name echoes the tang-tang of the knife hitting the board as live octopus is chopped into short, chopstick-sized pieces. An egg yolk sits in the middle to be stirred in just before eating, while the sesame oil and salt dip stays on the side so each bite can be seasoned to taste. Any water left on the octopus after cleaning pools on the plate and keeps the oil from clinging, so it is patted completely dry.
From the mountainous Iya area of Tokushima, this zosui uses buckwheat neither as flour nor as noodles but as hulled whole groats, called sobagome. Local tradition ties it to the Heike, who are said to have planted fast-growing buckwheat on land where rice would not grow well. Chicken, chikuwa, konjac and carrot share the broth with the grains.
Scallops patted bone dry are sprinkled with coarse salt, seared hard, and finished with a few spoonfuls of basting butter. The yuzu marmalade and lemon sauce goes on after the heat is off. Bite in and you hit grains of coarse salt, with yuzu coming through between them.
The shrimp are only halved and roughly chopped, which leaves them with some bite among the julienned radish after frying. A little potato starch in the batter makes the pancake slightly chewier.
Even a small amount of beet stains the broth red. The radish portion is kept the larger one, since a jar where beet outweighs radish turns muddy and dark. Both are cut into the same thin, flat pieces so a spoonful picks up some of each. The liquid drawn out during salting is added to the jar rather than poured away. Pear juice brings sweetness, sliced garlic and ginger bring aroma, and a cooled rice-flour porridge gives the broth body. A good stir after adding the salt water keeps that porridge from settling on the bottom. It sits out for a day before moving to the fridge.
Shrimp, squid and springy fresh wheat noodles share a dark, glossy dressing of chili oil, soy sauce and oyster sauce. Oyster sauce bridges the seafood's briny sweetness and the soy base, so the bowl leans toward savory depth rather than plain saltiness. Blending the chili oil evenly into the soy seasoning before tossing lets it coat the noodles and seafood in a thin, even film. Speed decides the texture: a short blanch and a quick high-heat toss keep the shrimp bouncy and the squid tender instead of rubbery. The noodles keep softening while they are mixed, so they come out of the pot 30 seconds short of the package time, and both noodles and seafood are drained hard so no water dilutes the sauce.
Cooked bulgur is mixed into a Korean bean sprout side dish, so the crunch of the sprouts comes between plump grains. The dressing is the usual namul one of soy, sesame oil and garlic with a little apple vinegar added, and seaweed flakes go on just before eating.
Fine powder left over from making koya-dofu, Japan's freeze-dried tofu, is stirred into a pot of diced chicken and root vegetables, where it drinks up the dashi and clumps into soft, crumbly curds. This home dish from Takacho in Hyogo is eaten with a spoon: everything from carrot and burdock to konnyaku, chikuwa fish cake, and fried tofu is cut small so each bite gets a bit of everything.
Ogeurakji is North Gyeongsang dialect for dried radish shriveled and curled up, and the name covers the seasoned side dish made from it. Jocheong (grain syrup) stands in for sugar, which makes the chili dressing cling heavy and glossy, and anchovy fish sauce with soy sauce does the salting. It needs a hard kneading by hand or the seasoning just slides around. Eat it right away, or give it a day in the fridge for the red to reach the center of each strip.