I'm Biggie: avid cook, speedy lunch packer, mom in San Francisco, & former expat fluent in Japanese. 
Leftover Remake: Potato salad Scotch egg
So I had all of this leftover purple potato salad with mojito and I was getting sick of it — I just wanted it gone, but I was getting tired of eating it straight. Japanese cookbooks often tout the time-saving technique of remaking your leftovers into totally new dishes for lunches; basically taking advantage of the effort you’ve already made on dinner. One way is to make croquettes (korokke) or little faux Scotch eggs with the potato salad — giving it a new look!
My son had half of one of these Scotch eggs (with tonkatsu sauce), leftover grilled cheese and ham sandwich strips, cherry tomatoes and steamed broccoli (from the mini microwave steamer — speeds up cook time by 50%).
My lunch added mini hamburgers (made from meatloaf mix and frozen), blueberries, an umeboshi (sour preserved plum), and rice that I had previously frozen in the shape of my 430ml bento box container.
Here’s the purple potato salad with mojito sauce that I started with (will we ever finish it?).
2 quail eggs
2/3 cup potato salad (any kind!) (4.5 oz. or 120g)
flour
1 egg for breading
bread crumbs (panko or Western style)
Hard boil two quail eggs and peel them (you can use chicken eggs if you don’t have quail eggs, they’ll just be bigger and use more potato salad). Cut the potato salad up a little if the pieces of potato seem really large. Divide the potato salad in half, and use your hands to completely cover the egg with the potato salad.
Bread the potato salad balls in your typical three-step manner: first roll to coat thinly with flour, then dip in beaten egg (let the excess drip off), then coat in bread crumbs (panko or Western style). I used panko on the two on the left, dry Italian bread crumbs on the one on the right.
At this point you could freeze them, and have a little stash ready to deep fry in the mornings when you’re packing lunch. EDIT: Evidently if you freeze them already breaded, though, some of the crust tends to come off in frying (I haven’t tested it out myself yet). To avoid this, you can freeze the little potato/egg balls the step before breading (freeze on a tray first, then once frozen, wrap each one individually in plastic wrap, then put into a freezer bag — squeezing out excess air from the bag before sealing). To cook, take them out of the freezer, and bread them when they’re frozen rock hard, really patting the breading into the potato. Deep fry gently without moving it around much.
Deep fry in vegetable oil heated to 340 degrees F (170 degrees C) until the crust is golden brown. Remove from oil and drain on a cooling rack set upside down on paper towels. Cut in half and serve with tonkatsu sauce (or okonomiyaki sauce, yakisoba sauce or even ketchup) if desired.
READ MORE:
- Need for speed: A mommy’s lunch manifesto
- Food safety for packed lunches
- How to pack a bento lunch and use “gap fillersâ€
- Choosing the right size bento box
- Biggie’s list of top speed tips, tutorials and equipment reviews
March 1st, 2007 | Categories: bento, eggs, for kids, freezing, leftover remake, meat, potatoes, recipe, rice, sandwich or wrap, tips, tutorial or how to | 
Print This Post
| 
Email this post
Loading ...
March 1st, 2007 at 4:59 pm
That looks great! Wow, it must be pretty small if it has a quail egg in it. Very cute!
March 1st, 2007 at 6:19 pm
those potato croquettes are GREAT!! you’re so clever!!!
March 1st, 2007 at 11:56 pm
wow they look delicious! thanks for the recipe…
March 2nd, 2007 at 10:13 am
Yes, it’s pretty small, although the potato salad can add a lot of bulk. It was tasty with the crunchy crust and the tonkatsu sauce, though!
March 2nd, 2007 at 10:17 am
March 2nd, 2007 at 10:17 am
My pleasure!
March 3rd, 2007 at 9:56 pm
Inspiring!! I had to add you..
How did you get into packing lunches like this?
I am very glad you take the time to do this. As a mom (correct?) I applaud the effort you put into prepping food for your family, you are an inspiration…
I had to add you by the way..
March 4th, 2007 at 1:35 am
Hey slr3na! Thanks for the add.
Kind of a long story — I lived in Japan for all of my 20’s and had a bento lunch here and there, but didn’t really go crazy for them or anything. A Japanese ex-boyfriend used to pack them for both of us sometimes, and my Japanese woman friends at work would make them for themselves and we’d eat together.
Then I moved back to the US and got married. In 2005 my American husband was misdiagnosed with celiac disease, which is an intolerance to gluten found in wheat, barley and rye. Bad stuff — you have to worry about kitchen cross-contamination, and eating out in restaurants becomes extremely risky. We went totally gluten-free for nine months (before the doctors figured out that my husband didn’t have celiac disease), and in that time I decided to pack him a delicious lunch that would make him feel like he was eating better food than his colleagues who were going out for lunch (don’t want him feeling deprived or depress about the extent of his restrictive diet). Got some Japanese-language bento cookbooks (I speak/read/write Japanese) and started studying.
I lapsed after the celiac “undiagnosis” until our son was about one, when I found myself carting around tons of little Tupperware containers in the diaper bag when we went out to the zoo, parks, etc. Duh — time to make little bentos for us! Got more Japanese bento cookbooks for kid’s lunches, and here I am. In turn, I’m inspired by these bento cookbooks and web pages that I read, showing tips and tricks for speeding up morning lunch prep so that you can provide a really nutritious, appealing meal without sacrificing lots of time in the morning (when you’re probably trying to get ready for work, get kids ready for school, etc.). They really have it down to a science — now to adapt these things to a non-Japanese kitchen!
April 28th, 2008 at 6:31 pm
u have given me a great idea on what to do with 2 pieces of hard boiled eggs ! thanks !
April 29th, 2008 at 1:30 am
@9 from oonik: My pleasure, oonik! Enjoy.
March 25th, 2009 at 3:26 pm
You can freeze potatoes? Don’t they turn into water-logged sponges?
April 29th, 2009 at 4:32 pm
Thank you for posting all of your wonderful recipes. We made these scotch eggs and they are so delish.
March 13th, 2010 at 10:36 pm
This looks great! Am definitely going to have to try this!
April 16th, 2010 at 6:10 am
Ha! The panko scotch eggs are great!. I made scotch eggs for Christmas this year but these look great. I might try panko on my next batch of scotch eggs. You could try using quails eggs and do some mini ones!
May 18th, 2010 at 5:02 am
To say the fact, i like your post,lucy
June 6th, 2010 at 3:08 pm
That looks amazing!! Would you mind sharing the purple potato salad with mojito sauce recipe? It looks pretty tasty all by itself, and then I’d have a great excuse to make these faux-scotch eggs.