877 recipes. Page 26 of 37
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This is Peking duck without the restaurant setup: no hanging the bird, just a rack in a home oven. The skin needs to dry overnight in the fridge, so it starts the day before, and the carved duck is wrapped in thin pancakes with cucumber, scallion and hoisin. Home ovens vary, so don't count on the paper-thin crackling of a restaurant duck.
A small piece of butter on each scallop melts into the juice pooled in the shell and becomes a salty, rich sauce with no extra step. Cleaning is simple and the steaming takes six or seven minutes, which makes it easy to put out when drinks are being set up in a hurry.
Glass noodles drink up soy and oyster sauce fast, turning clear and glossy within a minute or two in a hot pan. With shrimp, cabbage, carrot, and egg, this Thai stir-fry comes together in a few minutes over high heat.
A whole sea bream of about 1 kg is opened from the back with its fins and shape intact, packed with sweetened okara, and steamed in one piece for celebrations in Kochi. Sieved hard-boiled egg yolk goes over the top at the end, and the fish is presented on a large sawachi platter at weddings, New Year, and the banquets locals call okyaku. A sweet potato steamed alongside is the old way of judging doneness, and this recipe keeps that habit.
This oyakodon, chicken thigh and onion simmered in dashi, soy and mirin and set with egg, gets a handful of mitsuba at the very end. The lid goes on for twenty seconds before the heat goes off; any longer and the herb's parsley-like scent is gone.
Hwangtae is pollock dried through a winter of freezing and thawing in mountain air, which leaves the flesh light and full of tiny holes. Soaked and stir-fried, the shreds take the gochujang glaze all the way in and turn red, moist and chewy.
King oyster mushrooms stay firm and chewy even when cooked, enough to stand in for meat on the plate. A shallow crosshatch on the long cut faces gives the butter soy sauce somewhere to cling as it thickens. Wipe the mushrooms with a damp paper towel instead of washing them.
Mild Korean green peppers are halved and packed with a pork and tofu filling, the same idea as pan-fried stuffed peppers, but steamed instead of fried for a lighter result, with skins that turn just translucent. The thin dusting of flour inside each pepper is not decoration: it glues the filling to the pepper so nothing slides out during steaming. Leaving a short stem on gives each piece a handle.
The water used to poach the chicken breast is kept, and a spoonful goes in whenever the rice vermicelli starts to look dry in the pan. The thin noodles soak up the chicken flavor along with the soy and fish sauce and finish loose, with no liquid pooling underneath.
Fishermen in Yui, Shizuoka, came ashore after the sakura shrimp catch and shared this hot pot, which is where the name okiagari comes from. The shrimp go in fresh, seasoning a sweet soy, sugar, and sake broth before large blocks of firm tofu soak it up. Each spoonful takes shrimp, tofu, and scallion together, eaten hot.
Julienned radish is laid on top of the rice, not mixed in, and as it cooks its water and sweetness work down into the grains, leaving them moister and sweeter than plain rice. The soy sauce dressing waits until just before eating; stirred in early, it turns the rice mushy. Winter radish makes it noticeably sweeter.
This jeyuk bokkeum starts by searing: pork with only a thin coat of gochujang marinade is spread across a very hot pan and left untouched for about two minutes until the edges darken. Onion and scallion join only after the pork has browned.
King oyster mushrooms sliced 0.7 cm thick lengthwise are laid in butter in a single layer and browned on both sides, and only then does the soy glaze go in around the edge of the pan to reduce for about a minute. Finished with green onion and sesame, the salty butter-soy flavor works next to rice or with drinks.
Fat melting out of the mackerel mixes into the spicy broth and ends up in the potatoes. The potatoes simmer in the sauce first, and the fish joins them only when a chopstick slides halfway in; it needs just a short braise.
Chicken thigh goes into the pan first, and the fat and juices it releases carry the carrot and cabbage through a quick, high-heat toss. Water or stock is added only a spoonful at a time, so the egg noodles drink it up along with the soy and oyster sauce and no broth is left in the pan.
In Hokkaido, where potatoes were plentiful and glutinous rice was not, potatoes took the place of rice to give this snack, also called imodango, its mochi-like chew. Browned slowly in butter, each thick round turns golden and crisp outside while the center stays dense and stretchy. A sauce of ground perilla seeds and white sesame with sugar and soy sauce adds a nutty, sweet-salty finish.
Cooked octopus is far springier than raw fish, and thick pieces fight the rice instead of sitting on it. Sliced thin and wide with the knife held almost flat, each piece drapes over the sides of the rice and bites through together with it.
Dried shredded squid (jinmichae) is usually done in gochujang; this version uses butter and soy sauce, so it comes out rich and sweet-salty. There is only a pinch of chili flakes, so it is not spicy.
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.
Two mackerel are cooked whole, with only the heads and innards removed. Deep scores along the back open up in the heat and let the spicy sauce run into the flesh instead of sitting on the skin.
Rabokki adds instant ramen noodles to tteokbokki, the chewy rice cakes simmered in a sweet, spicy gochujang sauce. The rice cakes simmer alone for 5 minutes to soften, and the ramen and fish cakes follow for just 3, because the noodles soak up sauce fast; by the time they are cooked, the sauce has reduced to a thick glaze. Plenty of water at the start allows for that absorption. Half a packet of the ramen seasoning deepens the savoriness, and a layer of cheese turns it into cheese rabokki. Boiled eggs and green onion finish the pot, which is best eaten right away before the noodles swell.
The sea bass is steamed whole and comes to the table head to tail on one plate, and you pull the flakes away with chopsticks. The soy and sugar sauce is poured on lightly enough that the fish still tastes of itself, and smoking oil goes over a pile of shredded scallion at the end.
The rice cooks in plain water, and the salt and heat come later from a soy sauce with cheongyang chili and green onion that is mixed in at the table. Octopus tentacles steam on top of the rice so their sea aroma works into the grains, while thin radish slices covering the bottom of the pot stop the rice from sticking and add a little sweetness. The scorched rice at the bottom gets scraped up and eaten too.
Dried filefish jerky is tough and dry straight from the bag; a glaze of gochujang, soy sauce and oligosaccharide syrup softens it until the pieces bend instead of snapping. Kept in the fridge, it holds for five to seven days.