Jeju Linguine al Nero di Seppia: Gochujang Squid Pasta

Off the southern coast of the Korean peninsula lies Jeju Island, a place where the sea shapes both livelihood and cuisine. Among its prized catches is Jeju squid, known for its clean sweetness and tender bite—qualities that have long made it a favorite in Korean kitchens. Whether grilled over charcoal or gently simmered in spicy stews, Jeju squid carries the unmistakable flavor of the surrounding waters.

Ceramic bowl was wheel-thrown and glazed by me.

This dish brings that ingredient into a conversation between two culinary traditions. Linguine al nero di seppia, the Italian pasta tinted black with squid ink, becomes the canvas for a sauce layered with Korean flavors. The foundation begins with olive oil, onion, and garlic, followed by white wine and tomato paste that deepen in color as they cook. Then comes gochujang, whose fermented heat introduces the unmistakable character of Korean cooking.

What makes the dish sing, however, is its balance. The richness of butter softens the intensity of gochujang, while the gentle acidity of tomato paste and a touch of lemon brighten the sauce. Pasta water binds everything together, creating a silky finish that clings to the ink-black linguine. Tender slices of Jeju squid cook quickly in the sauce, absorbing its warmth without losing their delicate texture.

The result is a dish where briny sea flavors, fermented spice, and Italian technique meet in a single bowl—bold, buttery, and quietly complex.

INGREDIENTS

[serves one]

four ounces of Jeju squid, cleaned and sliced

four ounces of squid black ink linguine

one tablespoon of olive oil

two tablespoons of diced red onion

one garlic clove, finely chopped

one and a half tablespoons of dry white wine

one and a half tablespoons of tomato paste

one and a half teaspoons of gochujang

four tablespoons of pasta water

one and a half teaspoons of salted butter

a quarter teaspoon of lemon juice

a half teaspoon of fish sauce

Bring a pot of salted water to a boil and cook the squid ink linguine according to package instructions. Reserve four tablespoons of pasta water before draining the pasta.

Heat a Dutch oven over medium-high heat and add olive oil. Add the diced red onion and cook until it begins to caramelize. Add the garlic and cook until fragrant.

Add the white wine and let it reduce briefly. Stir in the tomato paste and cook until the color begins to deepen.

Add the gochujang and mix well. Pour in three tablespoons of the reserved pasta water and stir to loosen the sauce.

Add the sliced squid and cook for about one minute.

Add the cooked squid ink linguine and fish sauce. Pour in the remaining tablespoon of pasta water and toss to combine.

Turn off the heat. Add the butter and lemon juice, tossing until the butter melts and the sauce becomes silky.

Serve immediately.

Note: If Jeju squid is unavailable, regular squid may be used. Slice the squid thinly and cook it quickly, as directed in the recipe, to maintain tenderness.

This post contains an affiliate link.

_____

More recipes:

Korean-Inspired Short Rib Udon

Single Gal’s Kimchi Risotto

Mongolian Beef

Shrimp Stew

Cilantro Chili Sauce

ESSAYS | RECIPES | STYLES | IG

Articles sélectionnés

I earn commission on qualified purchases.

Comments

Inspired by Bar Santos: Piri Piri Sauce

It is one of those rare places in Los Angeles where I can feel authenticity and genuine warmth. When I first stepped into Bar Santos in Cypress Park, I was still recovering from my Portugal trip. If you recall from my IG Stories , a canceled flight, another delayed flight, lost luggage, falsely confiscated jamón ibérico, and the mystery of how airlines cannot distinguish between hotels and motels were traumatic enough to leave a mental scar. However, Bar Santos healed whatever wound remained. Piri Piri Chicken at Bar Santos The second time was to sip their Porto Tonico. I rarely talk about prices when it comes to bars and restaurants, but $9 for a drink, and a refreshingly delicious drink at that, is unheard of, especially in Los Angeles. While Porto Tonico got me back to Bar Santos, it was their Piri Piri Chicken that made me fall hard for them. It is very rare for me to try to duplicate a dish. Partly because I don't like to intelligently dissect what I am eating because it takes...

Impossibility of Jason Arday

When I first read about Jason Arday, he had just resigned from the University of Cambridge. Accusations of plagiarism reminded me of Claudine Gay , the former president of Harvard University, who resigned after accusations of plagiarism surfaced. There certainly was more to her resignation than accusations of plagiarism. She was also accused of antisemitism following her congressional testimony. Her story ended with her becoming the shortest-serving president in the history of Harvard. When a second article about Arday caught my eye, he had been found dead at his home in South London. To this day, suicide has not been named as the cause of death, but I find myself speculating that it was suicide, given the circumstances surrounding his death and the absence of any reported foul play. I imagine many of us are wondering the same thing. I think about his last days. On August 5, the university announced that it had accepted his resignation and would open an investigation into allegations c...

Gwyneth Paltrow is Aloof, So What Are You?

There are days when I feel utterly disconnected from the world. It took an IG feed from Diet Prada for me to learn that Gwyneth Paltrow had starred in an ad for 51 Park, a luxury residential development in Herzliya, Israel. Herzliya is an affluent coastal city north of Tel Aviv, and the project is being marketed as a luxury residential development there. To be clear, 51 Park is not in Gaza. It is in Israel. But precision does not make the geography innocent: parts of present-day Herzliya overlap with or sit near the land of al-Haram, also known as Sidna Ali, a Palestinian Arab village depopulated in 1948. Lisbon, Portugal There is misinformation about where the 51 Park residential development is located, and the distinction matters. If our beating of Gwyneth Paltrow is going to be effective, it should at least be accurate. I have never liked her. I have never hated her. Even before the 51 Park ad controversy broke, I felt she was irrelevant. Her acting skills are not impressive. Would ...

Perhaps Globalization Is Killing Us

This morning, the top five stories in my Apple News feed were: the U.S. and Iran trading strikes for the first time in weeks, from BBC News; one dead and 15 missing after sudden flooding at the Grand Canyon forced dozens to be airlifted, from Fox Weather; rescuers in Nepal racing to reach hundreds feared trapped in hydropower tunnels, from The Guardian; Congress finally talking about saving Social Security, from The Wall Street Journal; and, from ESPN, What Went Wrong? Novak Djokovic Knocked Out of US Open in First Round. Then, after months of food recalls and even a dog food recall, multiple states with impacted IVs as fiberglass detected in saline, from Newsweek, landed in my Instagram feed. Hermosa Beach, California, during record breaking heat While wondering how Novak Djokovic had managed to land among the morning’s apparent horsemen of the apocalypse, I laughed. None of it is funny, of course. Collectively, however, it is absurd. Perhaps my brain has been slightly cooked by the p...

Seafood Jajang Deopbap

Jajang, born from Chinese zhajiangmian and transformed in Korea into the rich, dark sauce made with chunjang, has become woven into the fabric of Korean everyday life. What began as an adapted working-class meal of black bean sauce (jajang) over noodles (myeon) in port cities has evolved into a national comfort food, synonymous with quick delivery, moving days, and casual family meals. Jajangmyeon was the pizza and burgers of my childhood. End-of-school semesters and good test scores were acknowledged with jajangmyeon. My grandparents always had it delivered when I stayed with them during school breaks, a proper opening to days of my grandmother’s home-cooked meals to come. Ceramic bowls were wheel-thrown and glazed by me. Its presence is as cultural as it is culinary: from shared bowls among students and office workers to its symbolic role on Black Day, when singles gather to eat jajangmyeon together. It is the unofficially official meal on moving day. More than just a sauce, jajang r...

The Grandeur of Mundaneness

Whenever I think of the word mundane, I think of Burning, the film starring Yoo Ah In. It was described once as being like watching paint dry. That comparison lingered. In many ways, the pandemic years felt the same—new coats layered endlessly over the wall, each variant stripping away the hope that the surface might finally harden. Kaanapali It feels almost obtuse to call the pandemic mundane. More than five million lives lost. Hundreds of millions infected. At moments, it threatened not just our survival, but our humanity—our ability to remain human, with hearts and intelligence intact. The first months were brutal. Our lives collapsed inward, reduced to rooms, screens, and routines that repeated without distinction. Before all of this, I had built a life around the belief that life itself is art, paired with a devotion to minimalism. I found serenity in ordinary things: cooking, reading, knitting, tending to plants, coloring, crafting. Even cleaning brought a quiet satisfaction, pun...

Sweaters for Him for You to Borrow

One of the great signs of love is gifting. Another is sharing, which is why a very good men’s sweater should never be considered the sole property of the man who technically owns it. You bought it for him because you adore him, because he deserves something soft and handsome, and perhaps because you had the foresight to recognize that an oversized sweater looks particularly good with leggings, bare legs, or the vague promise of returning it someday. My favorite restaurant in Santa Barbara, California, Loquita There is generosity in this arrangement. He gets a beautifully chosen sweater, and you get visitation rights. Everyone wins, especially when the sweater in question has the right weight, the right drape, and enough room to suggest effortless intimacy rather than petty theft. Consider these eight options gifts for him, selected with love and impeccable taste. You will need to gently whisper to him that sharing is caring. 66 NORTH Varmahlid Shearling Sweater JavaScript is currently ...

Autumn Style: The Trench Coat

The trench coat began, quite literally, in the trenches, which is not usually where one expects a fashion classic to be born. Its roots reach back to nineteenth-century British waterproof outerwear, but the version we recognize today took shape during World War I, when British officers needed something lighter and more practical than the traditional greatcoat. Burberry and Aquascutum helped define the look: weather-resistant fabric, belted waist, storm flaps, epaulettes, deep pockets, and enough military hardware to suggest there was once a purpose beyond looking exceptionally good in the rain. at MOCA on Grand Avenue Women began wearing versions of the trench during the war itself, as they took on new roles in the workforce and military-influenced clothing entered everyday life. By the 1920s and 1930s, the coat had escaped the battlefield and joined the modern woman for travel, motoring, and city life. Then Hollywood intervened, as Hollywood tends to do. On-screen, the trench became l...

The Art of the Cold Shoulder

The shoulder has repeatedly been treated as one of fashion’s safest ways to be sensual. Most of us give Brigitte Bardot the credit for making the off-the-shoulder silhouette iconic—and certainly, few wore it with more persuasive nonchalance—but fashion history tells a far longer story. Recognizable versions of the neckline appear as far back as the 17th century, when European bodices widened and dipped low enough to reveal both the décolletage and shoulders. By the 19th century, the silhouette had become a fixture of evening dress. Queen Victoria herself wore a broad, shoulder-baring neckline for her 1840 wedding, and through the 1850s and 1860s, off-the-shoulder ball gowns paired tightly corseted bodices with sweeping skirts and bertha collars that framed exposed shoulders in lace, silk, and ruffles. Victorian modesty, it turns out, was considerably more situational than its reputation suggests. Calouste Gulbenkian Museum in Lisbon, Portugal The silhouette continued to surface as fash...

French Miso Lamb

If you have been following me on Instagram , you may have noticed my recent focus on Italian dishes layered with Korean ingredients like kimchi and soondae . Having grown up with Korean food, I consider many of its dishes to be comfort food, and combining those flavors with Italian cooking felt inevitable. As much as I enjoy Italian food, I love lamb and have kept the recipes somewhat simple, as I did with Herbed Lamb Double Rib Chops . When I came across Mingoo Kang's Doenjang BBQ Lamb in Jang , it stood out—lamb is not a common ingredient in Korean cooking. Like Chef Kang, I wasn’t exposed to lamb until adulthood. His use of doenjang, a fermented soybean paste, led me to develop a version using red miso. I chose miso over doenjang for its more balanced, less pungent profile, allowing the natural flavor of the lamb to come through. Named after its two main ingredients, Frenched lamb rack and miso, this French Miso Lamb is simple to make. While it takes at least four hours to marin...

Exhaling Life

Search This Blog