Simple food treats you enjoy (five ingredients or less)

I'm a big believer in less is more. Or, more poetically, that "the quality of the chef can be determined by the quality of their simplest dish". It's why a traditional test of a chef's acumen is a simple three-egg omelet.

So, in that spirit, what are some treats you enjoy that are really simple? Now, mind you, there are some rules:

• More than one ingredient. So while a nice piece of fruit is great don't get me wrong, I want this to be something that requires at least a little preparation.
• No more than five ingredients.
• Bonus points if it is cultural, traditional, regional, or something like that.

Well...I guess that's it, actually: 2-5 ingredients.

My personal favorites are:

• Radishes and butter. This is one I found pretty recently, but oh my god it's so good (no wonder it's a traditional French snack). Some sliced radishes, good grass-fed butter, a sprinkle of sea salt, and then put it on a cracker or a nice piece of crusty bread. Something about the creamy butter and crisp, peppery radish interacting with the flaky salt...it just works.
• Melon and salt. Seriously, any melon. Sprinkle with salt. Eat. Flavor EXPLOSION! Watermelon and salt? BOOM! Turns to this beautifully sweet and slightly briny delicacy in your mouth. Honeydew and salt? KABLAM! Actually tastes MORE LIKE HONEY.
• Celery and peanut butter. Childhood classic. Can add raisins or chocolate chips for an extra treat.
• Deviled eggs. Take some hardboiled eggs, slice 'em in half, mix the yolks with mayo, dijon, salt, and pepper, pipe into the egg white halves. Nice little snacky snack. Could probably eat a dozen this way.
• Manchego-stuffed dates with bacon. Take a pitted date. Stuff that bitch with a small piece of manchego cheese. Wrap it in a small piece of bacon. Blast it in the oven until the bacon is rendered down and crispy. So good. Molasses-sweet date, minerally goat-milk cheese, smoky-and-salty bacon. Chewy-crispy-gooey. So much going on.
• Grilled cheese sandwich. Bread, cheese (keep it American, sorry not sorry), butter. Griddle until crisp. For an extra hit of nostalgia, I like to dip mine in ketchup.

OK your turn.

Sauteed zucchini and cheese. Just cook slices of zucchini in a pan on high heat with some grated cheese on top. Flip them over once the cheese starts to melt, cook that side until the cheese starts to brown. My kids like to dip them in ketchup. I disagree with this choice, but at least they are eating vegetables.

Chocolate is surprisingly easy to make. Just melt some coconut oil, then mix in a little powdered sugar and a lot of cacao powder, pour in a mould and refrigerate. In fact, this chocolate is best kept refrigerated since coconut oil melts at a fairly low temperature. Use cacao butter instead of coconut oil if you want it to come out more solid, but that's a fair amount more expensive.

Does steak count? For me it's just steak, salt, pepper, garlic powder, and ghee, fried in a cast iron.

Other than that, cheese toast is a close second. Just bread, cheese, and a light sprinkling of vinegar, put in the toaster oven.

@appariti0n: I second all that.

Huge fan of bread. Toasted, fried, in oven. Just butter and cheese is good, add some salami and spices for even gooder. Or don't do anything at all to the bread and slap some brie and fig marmelade on it. Garlic bread is also heavenly.

If using as much as 5 ingredients, there should be quite a lot of full blown dishes you can do. If I can say miso as one ingredient, salmon, rice, onion, broccoli and miso would make a tasty dish.

Haven't tried this myself, but the gf tells me dipping strawberries in sugar and pepper is good.

I'm so gonna try to salt some melon.. Sounds nice.

BLT

Steak

Tuna sashimi

Octopus sashimi

Shrimp + garlic butter

Lobster + garlic butter

Toast, margarine, vegemite

Toast, butter, marmite

Buttered roll, put brie and green apple slices in it

Natto mixed with tsuyu and karashi, eat with a banana

Cold soba noodles, sesame oil, dipping tsuyu with a bit of wasabi and roasted sesame seeds

@girlusocrazy: did you like natto the first time you had it?

I couldn't stand it, but I've sort of grown to like fermented foods more and want to try it again.

@mrbojangles25: Not the first time but I didn't know what I was doing. I just had it plain, because I bought the kind that didn't come with any sauce packets. It didn't turn me off but I didn't get the allure. I didn't realize that's the kind you buy when you already have other stuff to mix it with or you're going to add it to a dish.

When I knew how to eat it, I liked it right away. Personally I don't know how anyone could hate it. Maybe a texture thing? But it tastes and smells very mild to me and ends up mostly taking on the flavor of whatever you put on it after you mix it up.

I like it with the mustard and tsuyu, and I also like it with pickled plum. At first I thought the pickled plum was mid, but if I paired it with something sweet then it tasted good, like a banana. Then I tried the mustard kind with a banana and it was good too. Go figure.

But I also like it the usual way you see with rice and green onion and egg and blanched okra.

I became hooked on it quickly so I tried other ways to have it. I tried it on toast, or with noodles, but not great, I'd rather have it on rice or just on scrambled eggs. I tried it in sushi, I'd rather have other things in sushi.

With a banana is probably the best other way I've found to eat it than the traditional breakfast way. It's quick to just grab a banana and a thing of natto from the fridge and it fills me up when I'm hungry in the morning and have to get something fast.

@girlusocrazy: nice, I might try it again. I heard the spicy mustard is the way to go with it.

I do enjoy most soy products, and fermented foods, so I feel like I should enjoy natto. Yeah the texture is weird though haha.

That reminds me, my wife often buys homemade focaccia, which is my small snack right before bed. I usually dip it in a bit of olive oil and balsamic reduction. So good.

@appariti0n: That is good. My kids complain about the smell of the vinegar. I gotta hide if I want to eat that.

Depends on the steak, but like a good new york or filet... I am totally fine with just garlic salt and pepper.

I am a sucker for just simple cinnamon toast for a morning breakfast. Bread, salted butter, and cinnamon sugar.

Caramelized chop onions in olive oil, salt and garlic. Combined with boiled smashed potatoes with skin left on. 5 ingredients 😊

Salted peanuts and sunflower seeds, respectively.

Jam on bread / honey on bread

Fried black bread with garlic rubbed on it

Tomatoes, cucumbers, lettuces, salt, pepper and sour cream (or yoghurt cream) mixed (okey, six ingredients)