Favorite Friday Recipe: Furikake chex mix

I have finally come out of my accidental blogging hiatus to bring you this awesome snack mix recipe.  Please note that this is for seaweed lovers only.  Furikake is a mix of seaweed and sesame seeds and can be found at most Asian grocery stores.  It is delicious when eaten with rice and even more so with crispy cereal pieces!  I never got why BK loves chex mix until I tried this mix.  Of course, I'm a huge seaweed fan so that's probably the difference!


Furikake Chex Mix: adapted from this recipe

Ingredients:

• 1/8 cup butter
• 1/4 cup vegetable oil
• 1/4 cup light corn syrup
• 1/4 cup brown sugar
• 2 tsp soy sauce
• 8 cups cereal/pretzels/etc
• 1/2 bottle furikake seasoning

Directions:

• Melt butter and brown sugar in a saucepan and then add the oil, corn syrup, and soy sauce.  Stir on medium heat until it bubbles and forms a syrup-like texture
• Measure out 8 cups of cereal (I love Crispix and Honeycomb) or other add ins like pretzels, nuts, bugles in a large bowl
• Pour the syrup and mix immediately into the cereal
• Sprinkle furikake and mix more
• Bake at 200F for 1 hour, stirring every 15 minutes
• Try not to eat your weight in Furikake chex mix

Favorite Friday Recipe: Onigiri

Onigiri, also commonly known as Japanese rice balls, are an easy and tasty snack to make.  My friend Jill and I made these last weekend and they certainly helped my work days go by more easily when I could take a rice ball snack break.  There are lots of variations on onigiri and a great write up can be found here.  We chose to put cooked flaked salmon in ours along with furikake seasoning (seaweed, sesame seeds, fish flakes).


Salmon Onigiri

Ingredients:

• 6 cups of cooked Japanese rice
• 1/2 pound of salmon
• Furikake seasoning
• Nori (seaweed) sheets, cut into strips

Directions:

• Cook rice and let it cool a bit
• Salt salmon and cook in a pan with olive oil, cool, then flake into pieces
• Add flaked salmon and furikake seasoning into rice and mix
• Scoop out about 1/2-3/4 cup of the rice mixture onto plastic wrap
• Begin shaping into a ball or triangle
• Add a piece of nori (makes for a convenient "handle" when you're eating the rice ball)
• You can leave the rice ball wrapped up in the plastic wrap to keep it intact
• Eat as soon as you make it, or store in refrigerator and warm up in microwave for 30 secs when hungry

Asian snacks part 2: Kit Kat bars

You know how some things always taste better from your childhood?  Well I actually just found out that the Kit Kats of my childhood were made by Rowntree/Nestle versus the Kit Kats found in the US which are manufactured by Hershey's.  I still remember the old school Kit Kats being wrapped in wax paper and then foil with the iconic red label on top.  Anyone else?

Well things have certainly changed and who knew that there could be so many different varieties of Kit Kats out there now!  Here are a few interesting ones we picked up in Japan:

Green tea

Sakura flower (not sure what a flower tastes like)

Wasabi (eep!)

Asian snacks part 1

Most every Asian child will recognize the following two snack foods.

Yan yan is a Japanese snack with two compartments--one holds the biscuit/cracker sticks and the other contains the flavored frosting for dipping.  While I grew up with plain old chocolate and strawberry, there are a whole slew of flavors now.  Here are some we picked up while in Singapore including hazelnut, mango and chocolate/strawberry combo.

Pocky is another huge favorite from Japan.  It's a thin biscuit stick coated with a fun flavor such as chocolate, strawberry or almond.  There are a ton of variations and I was excited to find pumpkin, strawberry, choco banana and milk coffee.

I'm glad I finally got around to taking pictures of these so now I can break into them!  Hope they taste as good as they look!