“To make them at home, take the advice of the Ottolenghi chef Calvin Von Niebel: ‘Pick UK-grown cobs with plump kernels. Cut a flat base at the bottom, then quarter by slicing down through the cob using a heavy sharp knife. Fry in oil in a pan with a crunchy, nutty, spicy element like dhukka or furikake [that’s Japanese rice seasoning to you and me].’”

Louise McGillicuddy, The Sunday Times, October 10 2021

Furikake is a Japanese seasoning, useful for all kinds of things, but in particular sprinkling over salads, noodles, potatoes, and sticky rice.

You can fry a diced cucumber in sesame oil, and sprinkle with furikake and drizzle with a little tamari sauce.

You can sprinkle it over fried salmon and either serve with noodles and edamame or make a sauce of wasabi, spring onions and crème fraîche.

Its seaweed ingredient results in furikake being a particularly good seasoning for any fish and seafood.

It’s rather good on popcorn.

At The Smoking Lobster in Ventnor they sprinkle it on fries.

Or try it, as Calvin Von Niebel suggests in the quote at the top of this post, on corn on the cob.

Furikake (pronounced, according to the bottle, ‘furry car key’) essentially a umami taste, a little seaweedy (since it contains seaweed), slightly briny. It’s made out of dry-fried sesame seeds, both black and white; the same dried seaweed that’s used to make sushi – nori; dried red shiso leaves – Yukari; the blogger Foodie with Family adds bonito flakes (dried, thin-shaved flakes of tuna) and a little sugar.

You can buy it, easily, from the Mighty Amazon. Otherwise you can make it by mixing two tablespoons each of black and white sesame seeds, and sunflower seeds, and sumac and a few sheets of nori cut up as small as you have patience for, and dry-frying the lot.