Nogari (Dried Baby Pollack with Chili-Mayo)

Nogari belongs to the hour when dinner is finished but the table is not ready to let people go. In old beer houses, one dried little pollack could sit between three friends with cold beer and a dish of chili-mayo, and nobody felt cheated. A snack is still a dish. It deserves a notebook too.

The whole thing lives or dies by heat. Roast nogari too hard and it becomes a board. Leave it too pale and it stays dry in the jaw. You want the skin to blister in small spots, the flesh to puff and loosen, and the tail to bend when you press it. Then you tear it along the grain, not across it, so the chew stays clean.

The sauce must know its place. Mayonnaise softens the salt, gochujang gives color and a little depth, vinegar wakes it up, and garlic should be a whisper. Let it taste like dried pollack. 손맛 is real; I measure it anyway, so the next plate comes out the same.