I love the idea of making traditionally sweet foods into savory ones. When I saw this recipe I knew I would be making it. Despite sounding very fancy, goat cheese and pears are not exactly the most high ticket items so this is a pretty cheap recipe if you need to impress someone. On top of all of that, this is also a one bowl recipe so it’s pretty easy on the clean up as well.
Category: side dishes
Recipe: Homemade Nori Fume Furikake
Furikake is basically a dry rice seasoning in Japan and it’s not available everywhere but if you can get a few basic ingredients you can make your own in about 5 minutes. This is really sped up with a food processor.
Homemade Furikake
Adapted from Otaku FoodRecipe: Salt Cured Pickles
You can’t come up with an easier recipe. These pickles take as long as it takes to cut up a cucumber to make and then time does the rest of the work. Despite being only a few ingredients, the pickle packs a punch. While I think I like vinegar cured pickles more, these do in a pinch.
Salt Cured Pickles
Adapted from Otaku BlogRecipe: Potato Pancakes (Latkes)
Potato pancakes are one of the most basic food. The odds are very good you have a potato, onion, and eggs just hanging around your house so this is a great meal or snack for a night when you don’t want to make anything too fancy. The texture of these will change depending on which way you grate the potatoes. I just simply used a mandolin to julienne them but feel free to use a box grater or even get your lazy on and drop them in a food processor!
Potato Pancakes / Latkes
Adapted from EpicuriousRecipe: Cucumber Tomato Salad
Just a quick and delicious salad that brightens up any meal and come together in 5 minutes. I love myself some green salad but sometimes you just need something a bit different.
Cucumber Tomato Salad
Adapted from Budget BytesRecipe: Spätzle
We first had spätzle in Germany, which probably surprises no one, and we quickly fell in love with it. It’s a very simple recipe that provides you with pillow soft egg noodles. You can make these with a Spätzlehobel (spätzle maker) OR you can push the dough through colander or you can try your hand at cutting them on the edge of a board which looked like all together too much work. Yeah the maker is a mono-tasker but for $5 it was worth it for me.
Spätzle
Adapted from Food NetworkRecipe: Cornbread
A simple staple that goes with all sorts of foods, this cornbread like most others, whips up in about 5 minutes of work and tastes moist and fluffy and delicious. Perfect with chili, soups, stews, or even as a quick breakfast with cream or jam.
Cornbread
Adapted from Taste of HomeRecipe: Salmon Onigiri
Onigiri are fairly simply to make, they’re just balls of rice that are often shaped in to a triangle like shape and then covered in nori (dried seaweed). These ones are a bit upgraded mixing in some baked and season salmon to up the flavor content. These are best eaten same day but you can wrap them in plastic wrap to have them keep for an extra day or two.
Salmon Onigiri
Adapted from The KitchnRecipe: Kinpira
Kinpira is basically a style that boils down to “sauté and simmer” so naturally that’s all it is. In this one I used turnips and carrots but any root vegetables sliced thinly will do. This makes a really quick and tasty side dish and a nice way to sneak in some extra veggies.
Kinpira
Adapted from Food and SpiceRecipe: Potato and Fenugreek Stuffed Naan
If you’re like me you probably assumed that even if you could make regular naan (which I do on occasion) that stuffed naan was a bridge too far. This recipe made it super simple and while the original has you grilling them lightly while coated in oil/butter, I actually made these for Thanksgiving so I simply baked them in the oven so I wouldn’t have to babysit a pan. The dough rolls out perfect and not sticky at all. In the future though I think I’ll add some cheese and more spice!