Herring roe and cream cheese with wasabi 数の子クリームチーズ和え

Whenever we get herring roe or Kazunoko 数の子 for New Year, we have to finish it by the end of the first week of the year before it gets spoiled. Eating it just "as is" sometimes gets old so I tried to come up with different ways to serve kazunoko. Apparently other people think along similar lines as evidenced by this recipe.

The recipe calls for small cubes of kazunoko and cream cheese served on the bed of greens. For greens, I used baby spinach slightly sautéed (wilted) in butter and seasoned with salt and black pepper. I am not sure if the cream cheese (American invention) in Japan is different from the U.S. version--Philadelphia cream cheese, but my version was soft even straight from the cold refrigerator. As a result, I could not make neat cubes from it. I added a dab of real wasabi but did not add any soy sauce since the kazunoko had enough saltiness.

This is a nice small dish which goes well with sake. The combination of crunchy kazunoko and soft cream cheese gives a nice contras