Wednesday, July 30, 2008

July 30th Bento Lunch

I accidently drained the battery on BF's fancy camera, so the picture quality today isn't great since I used my little point & shoot.

Today deliciousness won out over pretty.
The main component of today's bento is rice paper rolls. They started out from a recipe in my Vietnamese cookbook, but by the end of it I had made so many substutions and changes that I think it is now an original recipe.

The rolls are filled with a layer of lettuce, followed by a few dots of hoisin sauce, strips of sausage, two egg sheet strips and topped with a layer of sweet potato matchsticks fried with canola oil and garlic. Yum! So this covered off a lot of the carbs and most of the protein for the bento.

I find it really tough to make rice paper rolls look pretty. Does anyone have any suggestions? This time I just put a few parsley leaves on them.

For added carbs, I cooked up some lotus root slices with red pepper. They're propped up against some lentil snacks that you can't see. The rest of the veggies are the standard asparagus, broccoli, sugar snaps and yellow zucchini. For fruit there is half of a clementine, strawberries, blueberries, raspberries and some tiny choke cherries. I think these are super cute and they are crazy sour.

No dessert today because I sent BF into work with a batch of chocolate and vanilla cake balls. I will try to post pics/recipe later today.

5 comments:

Unknown said...

The cake balls were delicious! Thank you! My only complaint is that I only got one :-(

About the rice paper rolls (Vietnamese is my favourite cuisine!) rather than trying to make them look nice on the outside, you could try and coordinate the food inside so that once rolled you could see the contrasting colours and textures through the rice paper. Just an idea.

Jacki said...

Hi Jennifer!!!

I'm glad you liked the cake balls. I kept reading people's blogs about them so I thought I would give it a try.

That's a neat idea you have for the rice paper rolls. I have some smaller sheets of rice paper that you could probably see through better so I think I will give it a try. I didn't know you cook Vietnamese food! Any recipes you recommend?

You should start a blog so I can see all the wonderful things you cook!

Unknown said...

I don't cook it very often but I do love going out to a good Vietnamese restaurant. Unfortunately this city only has two Vietnamese restaurants that I know of. Back in Calgary there were dozens! The only Vietnamese thing I cook myself is homemade pork spring rolls. They are awesome and they freeze really well. Next time I make some, I'll freeze some and bring some in for John to give you. I need to find a good recipe for lemongrass pork though. So yummy.

Regarding my own blog, I'm actually in the process of putting my own together! It's going to be about all the things I make though - baking, cooking & crafts. I'm just working on getting the layout right before I give anyone the web address though!

Jacki said...

Ooh, I can't wait to see it!

Have you tried Gingergrass on Barrington down by Superstore? It's my favorite Vietnamese restaurant. They serve Thai too. And they have bubble tea :D

I will never say no to home made spring rolls!!

Unknown said...

I have been there. It's pretty good but not as good as some of the places I used to go to back home. I don't go there anymore though since my brother was the only person that would go with me and most of my friends are afraid to eat Vietnamese (silly people).

Expect some spring rolls sometime next week. I plan on making a big batch and freezer them so I'll see if I can bring some in for John to bring you.