Geonsaeu-bokkeum (Stir-Fried Dried Shrimp)

Geonsaeu-bokkeum lives or dies in the dry pan. If you pour sauce over dried shrimp straight from the bag, you get salt and chew. Toast them first, with no oil, and they wake up: nutty, crisp, clean enough that the soy glaze only has to dress them, not rescue them.

Master Seong-nyeo kept a jar of dried shrimp for the days when the table needed one more banchan and the market money was thin. She made us sift the powder out before any pan touched heat. "Dust tastes old," she said, which was the whole lesson and also not enough instruction for anyone who wasn't standing there. Notebook 12 says 75g shrimp, 1 tablespoon soy sauce, 1 tablespoon rice syrup. There. Now it can travel.

With kkwari-gochu (shishito peppers), this becomes a sharper, greener banchan, best from summer into early autumn when the peppers are thin-skinned and cheap. If you have them, blister them. If you don't, leave them out; don't replace them with vegetables that water the pan. Tonight this asks for speed and attention: sauce mixed before heat, medium heat, off heat while glossy. You are not making candy. You are making a small salty-sweet side dish that sits beside rice for a week, and it should still taste like shrimp.