683 recipes. Page 20 of 29
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Made from the same tiny dried anchovies as crunchy myeolchi-bokkeum, this braise goes the other way: the fish soak up a soy and sugar syrup and stay moist and tender inside. The heat drops further near the end so they never dry out and turn hard, and as it cools, the glaze thickens around each anchovy.
The slightly bitter scent of crown daisy, ssukgat, cuts through the nutty weight of perilla seed powder and keeps this soy-dressed somyeon lively without any chili heat. Plum syrup and vinegar add a light sweet-sour lift, and cold cucumber strips crunch between the thin noodles. Holding back part of the sauce before tossing leaves room to adjust once you see how much water the noodles carry.
Dried miyeok swells more than eightfold in a 20-minute soak, so adding extra because the dry pile looks small quickly turns one side dish into a big bowlful.
Open the lid and pieces of mackerel sit on a bed of gondre (Korean thistle greens), its oil and the greens' earthy aroma having soaked into the rice as it rested. The crust at the bottom gets a splash of water and is eaten as sungnyung, a toasted rice drink.
When kimchi has gone too sour, this is the first thing many Korean households think of making. The kimchi is cut without squeezing out its juices and fried with onion over medium heat until the liquid in the pan cooks down and clings to the leaves. Besides rice, it often goes on top of ramyeon.
Cockles are at their plumpest from winter into early spring. They go into boiling water only until the shells start to open, then get a thin layer of spicy sauce and a turn in the pan. Bubbling sauce does not mean the meat is done; the center should hold 85 to 90°C for more than 90 seconds. The sauce left in the pan gets mixed into rice.
A couple of fork pricks in each shishito pepper keep them from bursting in the hot pan and let the soy and syrup glaze seep inside. The peppers are stir-fried on their own until glossy and lightly wrinkled, while the anchovies are toasted dry and only tossed back in for a quick glaze. You get nutty, salty anchovies against the mild green taste of the peppers.
Soft tofu spooned in large pieces stays in tender curds within the anchovy broth, sliding down alongside the knife-cut noodles. It is added only after the noodles are done and barely stirred, since any real stirring breaks it into small bits. The broth tastes clean and mild, seasoned only with soup soy sauce, garlic and salt and no chili. A minute of simmering after seasoning takes the raw edge off the garlic, and skimming the foam keeps the broth clear. The noodles are loosened by hand and scattered in rather than dropped as one mass. Zucchini half-moons cook for just 2 minutes to keep their shape and color.
Miyeokgwi, the ruffled base of the sea mustard plant (sold as mekabu in Japan), is thicker and bumpier than the leaves and bounces back when you bite it. It is dressed sweet, sour, and hot with chili flakes, soy, vinegar, and sugar, then chilled for 10 minutes before serving.
The oysters go on only after the rice has absorbed nearly all its water, and they cook in the five-minute rest and nothing more. Added at the start, they would shrink and lose their sweetness. The rice itself is unseasoned; everyone stirs in their own soy, chili flake, scallion and sesame oil sauce.
Beef marinated with pear juice and sugar is stir-fried over high heat with aged kimchi. The kimchi's sourness and salt make it less sweet than ordinary bulgogi, and its juices soak into the meat as they cook together. Regular napa cabbage kimchi works if there is no aged kimchi on hand.
Busan-style kkomjangeo, or hagfish, is cooked fast over high heat. Leave it too long in the marinade or the pan and it weeps water and loses its springy chew. The scallions go in just long enough to wilt.
Pollock roe is loosened with egg and water, spread thinly over slabs of firm tofu, and steamed until it sets like a soft savory custard. Firm tofu holds its shape in the steamer, and pressing out only the excess water, leaving the surface moist, keeps the slabs from cracking. Green onion and red chili go on near the end so their color stays bright.
Glass noodles, shrimp, squid, pork, napa cabbage, and wood ear fill a clear chicken broth, finished with half a hard-boiled egg on top. The dish came from Fuzhou in China's Fujian province, where it was a celebration food, and reached Kumamoto by way of Nagasaki in the late Meiji era. Today it appears at Chinese restaurants and home tables in central Kumamoto as lunch, dinner, or a meal after drinking. The seafood is added only after the pork and firm vegetables have cooked, which keeps the shrimp and squid from turning rubbery. To keep the broth clear, the glass noodles are boiled and rinsed separately, warmed in the soup only at the end, and the heat is cut as soon as the sesame oil and scallion are added.
Drying makes radish sweeter and chewy, and that chew is the reason to use it. The strips get only 20 minutes in cold water; any longer and they turn limp like fresh radish. Rice syrup in the gochujang dressing gives it its shine.
Oysters go into the pot last, after the rice has broken down and the radish is soft, and they need only a few minutes to stay tender. Most of the work is the long simmer before that: rice and minced radish, first toasted in sesame oil, cook for over 30 minutes and like to stick to the bottom, so stir from the base often.
Well-fermented sour kimchi goes in, and its sourness does the job of a sauce. When the kimchi is salty, the rest of the marinade goes in a little at a time rather than all at once, and wrapping bites in lettuce takes the edge off the heat.
Gochujang paste goes onto the cut faces of the crab and into the gaps in the shell, and it rests 15 minutes at room temperature. It grills shell side down over medium heat first; after the turn, more paste is brushed on the cut side and runs down into the shell over the meat. Whatever collects inside the shell ends up as a dip for the meat.
Hollowed cucumber sections are packed with a filling of ground chicken, tofu, and carrot, then steamed upright so each piece has a crisp green shell around a soft, juicy center. Seasoning stays minimal, just soy sauce, garlic, and sesame oil, and steaming without oil keeps much of the cucumber's fresh aroma. Seon is a style of stuffed, steamed dish from Korean court cooking, and a little mustard sauce or vinegared soy alongside adds a sharp note.
Shrimp and pork wontons, thin Hong Kong egg noodles and bok choy each keep their own texture in a clear pork bone broth. Stopping the mix as soon as the filling turns tacky, before the shrimp are fully crushed, keeps springy pieces in each bite.
Medium dried anchovies are toasted in a dry pan for a minute before any sauce touches them, which drives off moisture and fishy smell and keeps them crunchy under the glaze. Once the anchovies are in the sauce, the coating takes under 2 minutes, and any longer sets the glaze hard.
The rice has to hit the pan while the eggs are still soft and half set. Then each grain picks up a thin coat of egg, and what you get is evenly yellow fried rice rather than rice with lumps of scramble in it.
Most of burdock's aroma is near the skin, so it is scrubbed clean with a brush rather than peeled. A dried red chili in the pan leaves a little heat trailing behind the sweet soy flavor.
Each kkwari pepper gets poked once or twice with a fork, then rolled around a dry pan for about 3 minutes until the skin wrinkles and spots brown. The doenjang sauce goes in only after that, for 2 minutes of tossing. As it cools, the seasoning tastes stronger.