I’ve been trying to cook different dishes just to mix things up.
There’s a lot of dishes I’d like to cook, but living in Japan you’re limited by what you can get at local grocery stores (and your kitchen tools).
Some things I’ve tried have been:
* Hainanese Chicken Rice
* Chicken Adobo
* Gumbo
What are some (relatively) easy dishes that have easy to get ingredients?
15 comments
Bangers and Mash.
Get the sausages and baked beans from Gyomu.
Since it’s difficult to get gravy here, I usually make my own or dilute demi glace sauce with some beef stock, adding onions and garlic.
Spanish omelet. Ingredients: eggs, potatoes, oil and salt
One way to make it:
1. Half-fry the potatoes, no salt yet (they will finish cooking in later steps
1. Dispose of the oil and mix the eggs and potatoes in a bowl
1. Add salt until it tastes reasonable, then some more (the potatoes don’t have any in them yet, and Spanish food is supposed to be salty)
1. Make the omelet with that (the thicker the slower), this time make sure it’s olive oil
1. You can easily flip it by covering the pan with a bigger plate, then sliding the omelet back in
And don’t forget to have proper bread with it! Some people in Japan call it “baguette” or even “Furansu pan”. We call it bread.
Not from “my country” but some that come to mind are
* chinese stir fry (use mostly stuff left on your fridge)
* fajitas
* salisbury steak
* most of those one pot meals made in the rice cooker cooked with the rice
also note that easy is relative to multiple things, such as the skill/experience of the cook and what kind of equipment you have. For example there are some dishes that I would write down as easy but needs you to have an oven or air fryer such as pizza, sheet pan meals, sushi bake
Kimchi Pork stir fry
Get a bunch of kimchi, get a bunch of gochujang, get a bunch of pork (usually pork belly) and stir fry it until the meat is thoroughly cooked, delicous with rice
oooh chicken adobo, that’s a good one.
Since it’s getting colder, sinigang is great!
If there’s a Philippines store near you, you can buy the packet.
Add in your favorite meat (typically pork with bone, or fish), favorite veggies, and stir it up for a while and it’s good to go.
Big bottle of rum and some pepperoni.
Stuffed tomatoes over rice. Preparation ~10min
Many receipes for the stuff, but mine is:
– slice onions in small pieces
– cook onions and give them flavor (salt, pepper, anything else)
– open tomatoes on top, empty the inner part of tomato
– mix onions with beaf or pork meat, provence herbs, ~80% of the tomato inner parts
– put in tomato the above mix
– close the tomato
– put rice inside a plate for oven
– mix the 20% rest of tomato inner with water if not enough
– put the 20% tomato + water mix in rice
– put tomato over the rice
– put small piece of butter on the tomato
45min in preheated oven at ~180°C
Super easy, super good.
get those instant yakisoba noodle(packet not cup type). stir-fry with onion, garlic, veges, egg and some sesame oil, and there you have it mee goreng, chowmein etc whatever you wanna call it. best top it up with sunny side egg.
Colcannon is in my regular rotation;
boil potatos in one pot; sautee up some bacon/onions/cabbage in big pan.
once the potatos are soft drain the water and mash ’em up with as much milk & butter as you like. Chuck in the bacon/onion/cabbage stuff and mix it up real good. Season to taste.
From Lebanon: Muhammara. It’s a super nice bell-pepper-bzsed dip, goes with bread or chips. The traditional molasses is not easy to get, but you can replace it with a mix of honey and balsamic vinegar, that’s easy to find in supermarkets.
Hummus and Mtabbal are also traditional dips, but the ingredients are a smidge harder.
Falafels, made with chickpeas. Find dry chickpeas takes a bit of effort, but not dramatically so. If you’re near Tokyo, the big Turkish mosque has a little market that sells them. They also sell the tahini I use for the other two dishes.
I made hummus, mtabbal and falafels for a company barbecue, and it was a success. People kept coming back for more!
Ga Pao rice
Taco rice
Switch up your pasta dishes. Instead of spaghetti all the time, choose another shape. Sauce is easy to make and ingredients easy to obtain. Try different preparations (ie bakes). They’re also great to pair with various easy proteins for an even fuller meal.
Various braised dishes are easy to make if you have a good cast iron pot to keep on the stove. They use nothing you couldn’t find at a basic grocery store.
Chicken, veggies and pita (we find this at a halal market)
Protein grain bowls. Very easy to stock up on something like farro if you buy online, and that can give you a TON of meals.
Nira + eggs
1 bundle of nira
3 or 4 eggs
First, whisk the eggs in a bowl. Season with salt, pepper, and Chinese black vinegar.
Then, chop nira into inch long pieces and mix into eggs.
Finally, get a pan and heat it up. Add oil, and fry the nira egg mixture until eggs are slightly browned.
Serve over rice.
Jesus your definition of easy dishes are like hard mode for me rofl.
Hainanese Chicken needs to have the rice absorb some chicken broth to give it a distinct flavour, but not too much or you end up with congee. And there is also that tasty spring onion oil sauce to go with the chicken.
Gumbo reuqires extensive seafood knowledge to find the right balance and be careful not to let the sauce overpower the natural umami of seafood.
You sir/madam is certainly a courageous cook!
Anyhow, some of my personal favourites:
1. Taiwanese minced pork over rice (aka lu-rou-fan).
2. Canadian Poutine (fries with gravy and cheese curds)
3. Most French house pot roasts / stew receipes – just get a enamel cast iron pot and let it do most of the magic for you.
4. Japanese niku-jaga (stewed pork or beef with potato)
5. Japanese Ankou nabe (Monkfish hot pot – usually with miso based broth. Note monkfish needs to be blanched in hot water briefly to get rid of its slimy mucus and bacteria first or else the pot will literally stink)
/edit
6. Greek souvlaki and tzatziki dip sauce (basically barcecued of whatever protein on skewers – I personally like lamb. The harder part is the tzatziki sauce which is a yogurt based dip)
Meat pot.
1) cheap thick cut of beef shoulder, cut to 2cm cubes
2) few carrots, cubed
3) celery
4) onion, sliced
5) throw the onions in a pot with butter/evoo and let them cook a bit. Follow with the meat and brown it lightly. Throw the rest in, add water until everything is submerged. Add beef consomme.
6) let it simmer at least 2 hours. The longer the better.
For additional taste, 10 whole peppercorns, 2 tablespoons of tomato paste, 2-3 laurel leaves.
Serve with boiled potatoes.
So prep is like 5 minutes, active cooking 10, rest is just waiting.
If you have easy access to cheap cuts of beef and a tenderizer, [steak and gravy](https://www.deepsouthdish.com/2010/12/steak-and-gravy-with-onion.html?m=1) is delicious and pretty easy. Works well with both mash potatoes and rice.