It was like a tingling between my shoulder blades that I couldn't quite reach. The niggling thought in my brain had been amorphous at first, as elusive as a phantom, but it had the unmistakable flavor profile of the homemade gochujang from my friend Denise's family.

It was even a little scary, a crossing of lines if you will, kind of like the kimchi risotto that I made during the pandemic, trying to use what was in our pantry so we didn't have to make a trip to the store. But with this there wasn't that excuse, since I had everything on hand that I would need. Plus, really, the likelihood of an inedible culinary disaster was remote—my family will pretty much eat anything, exclaiming "tasty!" as they chow down.

So, to cut to the chase, an attempt at making gochujang mac'n'cheese had been on my mind for awhile. Sure, I've made various iterations of the classic cheesy noodle casserole from versions laced with salmon, Dungeness crab, pimento cheese, even one with a Tex-Mex twist. But a Korean-inflected version somehow seemed like a bridge too far—call me a drama queen, but it gave me the willies.

Maybe it was the idea of combining cheese with the chiles, fish sauce, sesame oil and miso in the gochujang. But we'd been making kimchi quesadillas—with cheese and the pickled, chile-laced cabbage—for lunch since I'd been making my own kimchi. What was there to be nervous about?

When I ran across a mention of a panko, gochugaru and sesame oil topping that would give the top a nice crunch, suddenly the clouds cleared, the sun came out and all seemed right with the world. I'd still caution the curious to be aware that this is not your mother's mac'n'cheese or anything that Annie or Mr. Newman would put in a box, but it's pretty awesome, if I do say so myself.

Gochujang Macaroni and Cheese

For the topping:
3 Tbsp. Panko
1 Tbsp. gochugaru
2 Tbsp. toasted sesame seeds
1 Tbsp. toasted sesame oil
1/2 tsp. salt

For the casserole:
1 lb. dried pasta (we like penne or rigatoni)
4 Tbsp. butter
4 Tbsp. flour
1 Tbsp. garlic, minced
2 c. milk
8 oz. sharp cheddar cheese, grated
8 oz. cream cheese
3 Tbsp. gochujang
Salt and pepper to taste

Bring a large pot of salted water to boil.

While water is heating, combine the topping ingredients in a small bowl. Set aside.

Over medium heat, melt butter in medium-sized saucepan. Remove from burner and add flour, stirring to combine. Place saucepan back on burner and cook on low heat for 1 minute, stirring constantly. Add garlic and stir briefly. Add milk gradually, stirring until it begins to thicken, then add cheese in handfuls, stirring after each addition until melted. Add cream cheese and stir until sauce is thick and creamy, then stir in gochujang. Add salt and pepper to taste. (The sauce should be slightly saltier than you'd normally make it, since when combined with the pasta it will tend to make it taste less salty.)

Add pasta to boiling water and cook until al dente. Drain and put back in pasta pot, add cheese sauce and stir gently to combine. Transfer to baking dish, sprinkling the topping mixture evenly over it. Bake in 350 degree oven 30 minutes.

I don't know about you, but this is the way it goes at our house: I'm browsing through recipes online or reading an article about our local fisheries—it is, after all, part of my job—and I think, "Gosh darn it, we need to have more fish in our diet."

Then I close the window or finish the article and forget about it.

But this summer we've invested in a CSA subscription from Stoneboat Farm, which means I will be picking up our share every Saturday morning for 23 weeks at its booth at the Hollywood Farmers Market. And that just happens to be across the aisle from the beautiful display at Linda Brand Crab which, in addition to the eponymous crab in its name, usually has a plethora of other local, fresh-out-of-the-water fish and shellfish on offer.

After I picked up our share this past weekend, I glanced across the aisle and noticed some beautiful rosy albacore tuna loins for a very reasonable price. So I picked up a small-ish, three-quarter pound piece and stashed it in the shopping bag with my vegetables, figuring I'd come up with something for dinner that night.

As usual the afternoon got involved, this time with a trip to the garden store for compost, digging it in to amend the dead soil in our raised beds, planting the tomatoes, peppers and ground cherries from Alice at Log House Plants, and suddenly the clock somehow said it was time to make dinner.

Oops. The albacore!

A quick scan of the veg bin—this is where a CSA really comes in handy—made the decision a snap, and with my homemade gochujang and other staples at the ready, I came up with a simple and, it turned out, incredibly delicious solution. Not just a terrific way to supplement a vegetable stir fry, this roasted fish would be great to use with any firm-fleshed fish as a main course with rice and salad, or sliced into cubes it would make a terrific appetizer right out of the oven (or off the grill) this summer.

Plus it makes it easy to fulfill that pledge to include more fish on our table!

Gochujang Roasted Albacore with Vegetable Fried Rice

For the marinade:
3/4 lb. albacore loin, sliced in 1" thick sections
3 garlic cloves, finely minced or pressed in a garlic press
2 Tbsp. gochujang
1 Tbsp. miso (I'm addicted to locally made Jorinji miso)
1 1/2 tsp. brown sugar
1 Tbsp. water to thin

For the fried rice:
4 c. leftover cooked rice*
4 c. vegetables, chopped in bite-sized pieces (I used cabbage, carrots and zucchini)
2 Tbsp. vegetable oil
1 onion, chopped in 1/4-inch dice
3 garlic cloves, minced
1 Tbsp. ginger, peeled and grated
2 Tbsp. gochujang
2 Tbsp. miso
1 Tbsp. fish sauce
1Tbsp. toasted sesame oil
1 bunch green onions, sliced into 1" lengths
1/2 tsp. red pepper flakes (optional)
1 Tbsp. toasted sesame seeds (optional)

Preheat oven to 400°.

Place a sheet of parchment paper in a roasting pan.

Chop vegetables for stir fry.

In a small mixing bowl, stir together the marinade ingredients. Thickly coat each piece of fish in the marinade mixture and place them on the parchment paper in the roasting pan. Reserve any remaining marinade for the fried rice. 

Place roasting pan in oven, roasting for 10 minutes. Remove from oven and set aside while you cook the fried rice.

In a deep sauté pan, heat the oil over medium-high heat until it shimmers. Add the chopped onions and sauté until it starts to become translucent. Add the ginger and garlic to the onions and sauté briefly, then add the gochujang, miso and any remaining gochujang marinade and cook for 1 minute, stirring to keep it from sticking.

Add vegetables starting with the ones that take the longest to cook (like carrots, then zucchini and cabbage) and sauté until crisp-tender. Add pepper flakes, fish sauce, sesame oil and green onions and heat briefly, then add cooked rice.* Cook for at least 5-10 minutes to heat the rice, then season to taste with more fish sauce, miso or sesame oil if it seems bland.

Cut the roasted fish into 1" pieces and place on top of the fried rice. Serve, sprinkling with toasted sesame seeds if desired.

* It's not necessary to have cooked rice on hand—I've made rice just beforehand with no problem. If you need to cook rice, bring 4 c. water to a boil and then add 2 cups long grain or jasmine rice. When it returns to a boil, turn down the heat to low and cook until all the liquid has been absorbed, about 20 minutes. You can cool the rice at this point, or use it hot.

synchronicity Noun; pron: syn·​chro·​nic·​i·​ty, siŋ-krə-ˈni-sə-tē; plural: synchronicities
1: the quality or fact of being synchronous.
2: the coincidental occurrence of events.

I love it when I'm walking with a friend—in this instance with my neighbor Ann, a professor of Asian art history, a professional soprano and an expert plantswoman—and we're talking, as we often do, about a favorite recipe. In this case, it was a sheet pan supper she'd made recently and, as we rambled behind our dogs through the neighborhood, I realized I had all the main ingredients in my fridge to make it that night.

Synchronicity, indeed!

When I arrived home I looked up the recipe online and found it was by New York Times writer Yewande Komolafe, who wrote "this recipe calls for a wintry mix of squash and turnips, but equal amounts of root vegetables like carrots, potatoes and beets, or lighter vegetables like cauliflower, brussels sprouts or broccoli will work well, too."

I had two very large garnet yams and two medium-sized rutabagas on hand, so I had roots aplenty, plus some carrots I'd just pulled from my neighbor Bill's garden earlier that day. The rutabagas still had their hefty leaves attached, so I chopped those up into bite-sized pieces, too, and threw them in with the rest of the vegetables.

Of course I had the exceptional gochujang I'd made from my friend Denise's family recipe, and I tweaked the NYT recipe by adding several cloves of garlic, a spoonful of locally made Jorinji miso and a couple of glugs of fish sauce to the sauce, plus a splash of fish sauce in the salad dressing.

The real genius of this recipe—thank you, Ms. Komolafe, I'll now be doing this with other dishes—is topping the roasted vegetables with a salad of lightly pickled radishes and scallion greens just before serving. I lucked out there, too, by pulling from my veg bin a gorgeous black radish from that selfsame CSA share.

If you have all the ingredients on hand, so much the better, but this is worth shopping for, too, and comes together in about an hour, most of which is roasting time

Gochujang Roasted Root Vegetables and Chicken Thighs

For the roasted vegetables and chicken:
3 Tbsp. gochujang*
2 Tbsp. soy sauce
1 Tbsp. fish sauce
1 (1-inch) piece fresh ginger, peeled and finely grated (about 1 tablespoon)
1 Tbsp. white miso
4 large cloves garlic, pressed in a garlic press
3 Tbsp. vegetable oil
2 lbs. garnet yams and rutabaga chopped into 1-inch pieces, about 5 loose cups (see above to substitute other vegetables)
10 scallions, roots trimmed, green and white/light green parts separated, sliced into 3" lengths
Kosher salt
3-4 good-sized, bone-in, skin-on chicken thighs

For the salad:
1 bunch radishes, about 10 oz., or 1 med. large black radish, trimmed and thinly sliced
2 Tbsp. rice vinegar
1 Tbsp. sesame oil
1/2 tsp. fish sauce

Heat the oven to 425°.

Combine the gochujang, soy sauce, fish sauce, miso, ginger, pressed garlic and vegetable oil in a zip-lock bag. Add the yams, rutabagas and scallion whites (reserving the darker greens for the salad), and shake to coat with sauce. Transfer to a rimmed baking sheet. Season the chicken with salt and toss to coat in whatever is left of the glaze in the bag. Arrange the chicken pieces skin-side up between the vegetables on the sheet. Roast until vegetables are tender, chicken is cooked through and the skin crispy and browned in spots, about 40 minutes.

While the chicken cooks, thinly chiffonade the scallion greens crosswise. Cut the radishes into thin rounds. If using a black radish, cut into approx. 1" sticks and slice thinly crosswise (do not peel—that black skin is very dramatic). In a small bowl, toss the sliced scallion greens and radishes with the rice vinegar, sesame oil and fish sauce. Season to taste with salt and set aside to lightly pickle, stirring occasionally to distribute dressing evenly.

When chicken and vegetables are done, remove the chicken to a plate and transfer vegetables to a platter. Quickly top vegetables with the drained quick-pickled salad, then place chicken thighs on top.

The recipe suggests serving this with steamed rice, but to me, root vegetables are generally fairly starchy, so I didn't feel it needed the rice.

* If you don't want to make your own gochujang, I've found Mother-in-Law's is a decent brand, but won't have nearly the depth of flavor you'll get from homemade.

Gochujang is making an appearance more and more often on our table, ever since my friend Denise shared her family's recipe for the jammy, spicy, deeply umami-esque red pepper paste that is ubiquitous in Korean cooking.

My fascination with it reminds me of the time, years ago, when Mark Bittman would wax poetic in his New York Times columns about Spanish pimentón, confessing in one column that he "may be at the point where I use more pimentón in my cooking than anyone in Spain."

So I was thrilled when my brother, who's not a big fan of Korean cuisine but graciously accepts that I am, was moved to send me a recipe he'd run across in Bon Appétit by Zaynab Issa for a garlic-laden gochujang noodle dish. I'm pretty sure I immediately ran to the cupboard to check on our noodle situation, finding soba noodles but not the mein, udon or ramen specified in the recipe.

Undeterred, I rationalized that the buckwheat noodles would be a hearty counterpoint to the red pepper paste—and that no one would object too strenuously to this detour from a recipe, especially if I didn't mention it. I also didn't have the broccoli rabe called for in the recipe, but I did have carrots, scallions, garlic and frozen peas from the previous summer.

Stirring together the ingredients for the sauce, with a couple of tweaks to the recipe, took just a few minutes. As always, chopping the vegetables took a bit more than that, but fewer ingredients (and those ready-to-cook peas) makes it simpler. A few minutes of sautéing, then pouring in the sauce and mixing in the already-cooked noodles until they were heated through made this easily a less-than-30-minute meal.

Next time I'm going to get some locally made Umi Organic ramen or yakisoba, but dried udon noodles (photo, above right) or even spaghetti would work. Plus it's infinitely adaptable depending on what you find in your veg bin. And adding some oomph by throwing in cubed tofu, or leftover roast chicken, pork or beef wouldn't be a bad idea, either. 

The key is in that sauce, which I can see coming in handy for everything from chicken wings to marinades. Stay tuned!

Make your own gochujang from my friend Denise's family recipe. It's easy to do if you have a couple of hours, it makes enough to last for months and is so much more flavorful than store-bought!

Gochujang Noodles

For the sauce:
4 Tbsp. gochujang
1 Tbsp. soy sauce
2 Tbsp. light or dark brown sugar
2 Tbsp. tahini (raw sesame butter)
1 Tbsp. toasted sesame oil
1 Tbsp. fish sauce

For the noodles:
8 oz. dried soba noodles
3 c. chopped vegetables (raab, bok choi, carrots, kale, peas, cabbage, scallions or whatever you have on hand)
6 cloves garlic, chopped fine
1/2 c. stock (chicken, pork or vegetable)
1/2 block cubed tofu and/or 1 c. cooked meat (optional)
1 tsp. sesame seeds for garnish (optional)
Cilantro, chopped fine for garnish (optional)
1/2 lime, sliced into wedges, for serving (optional)

Bring water to boil in medium saucepan. Cook noodles for 4 minutes. Drain and rinse under cool running water.

Whisk gochujang, soy sauce, brown sugar, tahini, sesame oil, fish sauce and 2 Tbsp. water in a small bowl to combine; set aside.

Heat vegetable oil in a wok or large nonstick skillet over medium-high. Add vegetables and garlic and sauté until crisp-tender, about 2 minutes. Add sauce and cook, stirring often, until thickened slightly, about 2 minutes. Add tofu or cooked meat, if using, then add noodles, tossing gently until heated through, about 1 minute; add stock if it seems too thick. Serve directly from cooking pot or serve individually in bowls, garnishing with sesame seeds and cilantro. Place lime wedges in a bowl on the table for drizzling over servings.

Annie Mah was 14 years old when a man named Chong Chin Joe—known as C.C. Joe—of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, chose her picture from among those of young Korean women from peasant families that were presented by a network of family friends. In 1925, she left her family in Hawaii to make the arduous journey across an ocean and most of a continent to marry a man she'd never met.

She brought with her only the basics she needed for the journey, but Annie also carried with her the recipes her mother had taught her, recipes that her own mother had brought with her from Korea when she was imported to work in the pineapple fields of Kauai in the early 1900s. The recipes were for staples of the Korean diet like kimchi, a traditional dish of vegetables fermented with salt and chiles, and another for a sweet-spicy miso paste called gochujang (or kojujung, as the family refers to it).

I first tasted Annie's gochujang at a dinner at my friend Denise della Santina's home. I was entranced by the sweet, spicy tang of umami and the thick, jam-like texture of the miso, chiles, garlic and honey as it spread across my tongue. I'd used a store-bought brand in my Pandemic Pantry Mapo Tofu, but like so many mass-produced versions of traditional condiments it didn't have anywhere near the depth of flavor that this homemade sauce had.

Of course I immediately begged Denise to share the recipe, one that her sister Cyndi had demanded from their aunt Elsie, Annie's second-oldest child (photo, above). (I confess that I myself am guilty of "forcing" my mother to share family recipes.) After observing Elsie’s techniques, Cyndi had tried it, tweaked it, and finally written it down so it could be consistently reproduced. Denise offered to coach me through the process via text, since it takes several hours to cook the paste down to the proper consistency. Even so I could have reduced it even more, according to the family members who've tried it. Except for that, Denise pronounced it almost identical to her family's and in fact, because it dries out as it ages, she liked that mine was softer and more spreadable.

As for Annie herself, after arriving in Milwaukee she joined Mr. Joe in his Oriental Food Company, bearing six children over the next decade. Elsie said she remembers her mother standing at the end of a long counter, chopping vegetables for the business's signature chop suey, which C.C. produced for the lunch counters at Woolworth's and Newberry's.

Because she was so young when she arrived, Annie had almost no experience raising children, and certainly no experience with Midwestern winters, but Elsie recalled that there was a group of "German ladies" from their church who basically adopted the family and helped teach Annie how to keep house and take care of the children. Elsie remembers "five spinster sisters," the Lindenlaubs, who taught Annie to make corned beef with cabbage, as well as a warm German potato salad.

Denise said that her mother, Betty, put a Korean twist on the traditional German corned beef recipe—she referred to it as "yangnyeom," Korean for "seasoning," which my own mother would have called "doctoring"—since all that was available was canned corned beef, chopping in garlic, onions and ginger with the cabbage, along with splashes of sesame oil and soy sauce.

The Milwaukee chapter of their lives was upended around 1940 when C.C.'s business partner absconded with the business's money and he was forced to close it. The family then made their way to Los Angeles, where they had relatives. Annie and the children eventually continued on to Hawaii, while C.C. moved to Santa Barbara to test his fortunes. Having entered the U.S. illegally, he didn't have papers to travel outside the country—at that point Hawaii, not yet a state, was a territory of the United States and required official identification from travelers.

Family lore also suggests that having selected what he thought was a dutiful Korean wife, instead C.C. had married a strong-willed, independent thinker who wasn’t interested in being managed—and it meant their future as husband and wife wasn’t to be. But the gochujang lives on among the family members in Minnesota, Portland, Berkeley and beyond, wherever the family (and their friends, like me) still make it.

Annie Mah's Kojujung (Gochujang)

Adapted from Elsie Rie via Cynthia Forsberg.

Prep time approx. 3 hours. Yield approx. 2 quarts.

2.2 lbs. (1,000kg or 1 kilo) red miso) [I used Jorinji Red Miso. - KB]
1 c. toasted sesame oil
8 cloves chopped garlic
1/3 c. chopped ginger (peel & grate, do NOT lose the juice)
1 c. toasted, crushed sesame seeds [best in a mortar and pestle or spice grinder; my processor didn't grind them fine enough. - KB]
1 1/2-2 1/2 c. dark soy sauce
1 1/2 c. honey
1 c. Korean red pepper flakes plus 2 Tbsp. cayenne for heat as needed
6-8 Tbsp. shrimp powder [If not available, 4 Tbsp. fish sauce is an acceptable substitute. - KB]

Slowly brown the miso in a large, heavy frying pan (13" cast iron works well) over a very low flame.

Toast sesame seeds [I used a non-stick frying pan over medium heat, shaking or stirring constantly until golden. Cool. Crush sesame seeds in mortar and pestle with salt or grind in spice grinder until fine. - KB]

Add each ingredient while stirring and browning constantly over very low heat.  

Add the soy and sesame oil in half-cup increments, stirring until dissolved. Continue browning until it achieves a dark chocolate brown color, but retains a thick, paste-like consistency, about two hours or even more. Turns the color of very dark molasses, but it takes constant stirring on a very low flame. Should be a thick paste.

Get Denise's family recipe for her grandmother's kimchi as well as their favorite Greek dolmathes (stuffed grape leaves).

All photos courtesy Denise della Santina.