Many staying at home as countermeasure to the coronavirus pandemic may have found themselves exhausting not only their food delivery options, but also their own home recipes by now. Fortunately talented artists and chefs have taken to Twitter to provide recipes for creative dishes such as cheesecake that looks exactly like a cartoon hunk of cheese or Zen rock garden toast.

Those looking to up their game to Michelin star-worthy cooking with little fuss are in luck, as Shusaku Toba, the owner-chef of Michelin one star Japanese-French restaurant Sio, is showing how to turn simple Japanese convenience store items into gourmet cooking with recipes that require very little prep!

Toba shares the recipes in Japanese, but the step-by-step picture guides make things easy to understand. Here's a few of his creations that make a quick run to the conbini worth it. Of course, if you don't live near a Japanese convenience store, you can substitute similar items.

This simple recipe calls for lightly brushing a peanut butter Lunch Pack sandwich (of course, a homemade PB sandwich will suffice) with soy sauce and topped with a slice of cheese. Throw the sandwich into a toaster oven and add a fried egg on top. Toba says the salty aroma of the soy sauce and rich sweetness of the peanut butter is like mitarashi dango, mochi dumplings slathered in a sweet soy sauce.

Toba's simplest recipe will actually yield a crispy but fluffy Croque Monsieur or Monte Cristo sandwich. The chef recommends microwaving a convenience store egg sandwich (no microwave needed if you make your own) while still in the bag for ten seconds, coat with slices of ham and cheese, and then pop it in a toaster oven until brown.

This one could get a little tricky without a Japanese convenience store, but looks fun nonetheless. The recipe calls for mayonnaise-corn bread popular at conbini. Simply top the bread with shredded cheese and Japanese sansho pepper, and let it cook in a toaster oven to your liking. Take it out and top with another serving of sansho pepper for sweet but citrusy and spicy bread treat.

The chef's take on an upgrade tartar sauce katsu burger. Toba takes a cabbage and chicken menchi katsu sandwich from 7-11, and then tops it with a homemade sweetened tartar sauce (the chef's sauce uses mayo, chopped onions, fresh cream, honey, and Japanese tsukemono pickles). First microwave the sandwich, then after getting it extra crispy in a toaster oven, give it a heavy dollop of the tartar sauce (or your own concoction).

If you want to see more of the chef's simple gourmet creations, be sure to follow him on Twitter, as well as a separate account dedicated for recipes. You can also find more detailed breakdowns of the above recipes on this blog post.


By - Big Neko.