September 15th Bento Lunch

I managed to get up at a reasonable hour this morning, so I had time to put together this bento lunch.
The main dishes are the onigiri and pieces of honey glazed roasted duck leg, both of which I made yesterday. The onigiri are filled with a mixture of bonito flakes and soy sauce and wrapped with little nori strips.

The recipe I used for the duck is from the book Into the Vietnamese Kitchen (in the carousel on the left side of this blog). It's time consuming to make, but it's such an amazing recipe that I don't mind taking the time once in a while.

The duck is first marinated for 15 minutes in a mixture of sake, salt and ginger juice. I then added the marinated to the water in my steamer and steamed the duck leg for 25 minutes, to make it soft and juicy inside.

The glaze is made from a combination of ginger, garlic, sherry, Chinese 5-spice powder, honey, salt and soy sauce that is heated to boiling and then and pressed through a sieve to remove the garlic pieces and make it smooth.

The duck is roasted in the oven at 425 degrees for a further 35 minutes in order to crisp up the outside. The glaze is brushed on and then it is roasted another 5 minutes, followed by another coat of glaze and another 5 minutes of roasting time.

The dipping sauce is made by reheating the leftover glaze and mixing in some hoisin sauce for added thickness and sweetness. (There's a container of dipping sauce hidden under the kumquat slices).

I also made lotus root kinpara this morning by peeling and slicing about 2" of lotus root which is then soaked in cold water. Drain and saute in a bit of canola oil for a couple of minutes. Add a mixture of 1 Tbsp soy sauce, 2 Tbsp sugar and 2 Tbsp mirin and cook for three more minutes, then drain.

I like the sweet crunch of this dish. I think lotus root goes well with a small serving of rice like the one in this bento, because with the lotus root's starchy, potato-like texture, the two foods together make up the main carb component of the lunch.

I included two gyoza with a bottle of dipping sauce tucked underneath. For veggies, there are steamed asparagus, broccoli, sugar snaps and snow peas. For fruit, I included some honey kiwi flowers and of course, blueberries.

Yummy!

September 4th Bento Lunch

BF was pretty grumpy this morning, so I decided to break out the big guns for his bento today - unagi nigiri sushi.

Unagi is Japanese for eel. You can buy it from the freezer section of your Asian grocer already barbecued with kabayaki sauce (similar to teriyaki sauce. I'm not actually sure what the difference is). It just needs to be toasted in the oven to reheat it and then cut into slices. And it's BF's favorite food.

Unagi is one of the few traditional types of sushi I'm comfortable putting in a bento lunch because the meat is cooked. Other types include tamago (egg), avocado and any fruit or veggie roll. I'm not comfortable using raw fish in a meal that sits at room temperature all morning (and BF has been known to get too busy to eat until even later in the day) both for health reasons and because raw fish should be served fresh, anything else doesn't do it justice.

I tucked a foil cup of pickled ginger in the top left corner and a restaurant pack of soy sauce on the side (this bento box doesn't have a little shelf on the top to hide things like that). I couldn't think of a way to include wasabi that didn't take up much space or make a mess. Does anyone have any ideas?

Below the sushi there are three gyoza and some steamed sugar snaps. I like to include dumplings with sushi because both contain a combination of carbs and protein. I like to either have one main carb and one main protein, or two items that have both, and sushi and dumplings are a perfect combination!

Above the sushi there is some steamed gai lon with dried cranberries, as well as some carrot flowers that I boiled for two minutes, just enough to soften the outside.

Beneath the sushi there are a few piece of steamed asparagus and three thin slices of kumquat to add a bit of bite. For fruit there was only room for berries today, strawberries and blueberries.

August 12th Bento Lunches

This was one of those mornings where you lie in bed for ten minutes trying to decide whether or not to bother getting up to make bento, choosing between luxurious sleep or a delicious lunch.

Lunch won out today. I put together a couple of bentos for BF and his dive instructor for their dive this morning. All that swimming works up an appetite! I used a nice, big (1320ml) two tier bento box for this (you can see a picture of it here) that BF can just throw in his bag. As an aside, when I've been out shopping this summer and see the big picnic kits that carry all of your plates and cutlery and stuff, I think of this bento box and how little space it actually takes me to pack a portable lunch and I just want to stand in those stores all day and explain to people that they don't need all that. I mean figuratively of course, I would never actually do that. But they do seem excessive to me. Simplify!

Anyway, back to bento. I didn't do anything complex this morning because I was pretty rushed. Usually BF is sleeping when I make bento, but this morning he was up getting ready for his dive. I think it scared him a bit to see me reaching for the biggest knife we own while my eyes were still half shut, and then start hacking away at whatever I could find.

I figured that since both bentos were for grown men, I would load them up with meat. I had a huge piece of pork schnitzel in the freezer. These are great because they are so thin and fast to cook. I just defrost it in the microwave, throw it in a pan with some canola oil for a minute or two, add a little water and cover to steam for a minute or two more (so that I can be sure it's cooked through) and then fry uncovered for a few more minutes until crispy on the outside. I sliced it up after it was cooked. There are a couple of pork dumplings and a small bottle of sauce in there as well.

I used up the rest of the batch of forbidden (black) rice onigiri that I made last week. The heart shaped ones are stuffed with bonito flakes and soy sauce and the star shaped ones have a red bean (adzuki) filling.

For veggies, I steamed up some yellow swiss chard. I had never seen this before, but it's pretty cool. The stems are bright yellow (they didn't show up well in this picture, they look kind of greenish here) and they taste like regular swiss chard, but maybe a little more bitter. There are also some carrot rounds, broccoli, sugar snaps and cauliflower. I haven't been able to find thick carrots for a few weeks, so sadly the carrot I used today wasn't big enough to punch out shapes.

For fruit there are strawberries and blueberries. That's all there was room for. I also packed up half a dozen cupcakes for BF to take with him to share with the dive shop people, so I decided a dessert was unnecessary for the bentos.

There actually was a theme to these bento lunches, although I'm not sure it's obvious. I decided I wanted to use every colour of the rainbow and I actually managed to do it. To recap:

• red strawberries
• orange carrot
• yellow swiss chard
• green broccoli
• blueberries
• purple onigiri

I love when things work out the way I want them to!

August 11th Bento Lunch

I've been watching a lot of Iron Chef on YouTube. Omg what a fun show! It's kind of renewed my zest for trying new Japanese recipes and cooking techniques so I've been incorporating a lot more Japanese food in my non-bento meals. I'm discovering all kinds of wonderful food combinations. Loving it! Since I'm not working at the moment, it's a lot more important to me to make sure that I'm preparing lots of healthy, well balanced meals so that BF and I are well fed. I figured it's the least I can do.

I took today's picture in natural light instead of with flash in the kitchen and I think it washed out the colours a bit. Everything didn't look so white in real life! Well at least I know for next time.
BF had some disappointing seafood udon at a restaurant yesterday, so I had planned to make some delicious yakiudon (fried noodles) for bento today to make up for it. To my dismay however, I realized this morning that I'm completely out of udon noodles. So I used somen noodles instead (yakisomen?). They're a smaller, flat noodle, so I fried them for a much shorter time and it still turned out pretty yummy.

To make them, I fried up some chunks of chicken breast in a little canola with salt and pepper while boiling the noodles for three minutes. Then I added another tablespoon or so of canola oil to the chicken (to keep the noodles from sticking together) and threw in chives, red pepper pieces and the somen noodles. Once it had fried for about a minute I added about 1 Tbsp each of sake and soy sauce (my favorite seasonings for fried noodles) and fried for about a minute more.

At the very top of the bento is some sauteed gobo (burdock root) and carrot julienne. For gobo, you want to first peel it and soak it in cold water for a bit, and then drain before you use it. I sauteed the gobo and carrot in a bit of sesame oil and then added some mirin and soy sauce. It turned out a bit too salty for my taste (the gobo really sucks up the flavor!) so next time I will use less soy sauce.

Keeping with the soy theme, I also made some soy quail eggs. To make them, I first hard boiled the eggs (three and a half minutes) and then put them in a ziplock bag along with a mixture of two parts soy sauce, one part rice vinegar and one part sugar for about an hour (BF is working the night shift this week so I don't have to have the bentos ready until late in the morning). I made four eggs, but I only used one in this bento lunch, sliced in half with a small dot of cream cheese on the yolk. They are sharp and salty and really yummy!

There are three home made gyoza as well from a batch I made last week.

I balanced all of these sharp flavours with lots of fresh fruit and lightly steamed veggies. The vegetables are broccoli, cauliflower and sugar snaps. The fruit are strawberries, blueberries, honey tangerine segments and yellow kiwi flowers. There is a chocolate seashell for dessert.

July 10th Bento

This has been a pretty busy week so far. It was snack bentos mostly and they were nothing special, so I didn't bother posting them.

This morning I actually managed to get up and make a proper bento. Nothing new today, just all foods that I love!
I made two rolls of chicken teriyaki sushi (one for BF and one for me). I made a two egg and spinach omelette, which makes exactly enough to put to hearts in each bento. I fried up some gyoza and some plantain hearts together to save time. For veggies there is asparagus, broccoli, sugar snaps and sesame fried baby bok choy.

I used all kinds of different fruits today. There is half an apricot, cut into slices, two lychees, some satsuma wedges, cherries, strawberries, raspberries and blueberries.

Simple but yummy, with lots of variety!

July 2nd Bento

BF seems to have misplaced his single tier bento box. We've looked for it everywhere but it hasn't shown up yet. It's been two days and at this point I'm not sure whether I want to find it or not. I'm a bit scared of what might be growing in it by now.

So we might be back to two tier bentos for the next little bit.

I decided I wanted to make sushi last night and BF requested inarizushi, so that's what I made. We both really enjoyed the fruit sushi I made last week, so I decided to see how it would carry over to the inari version. I made them smaller than last time by folding in the edge. I think it looks much better this way. I filled the tofu pouches with a little sushi rice and topped them with strawberry and kiwi pieces. The rice was premade and frozen, and the assembly was done this morning. Took about 5 minutes including the time it took to cut up the fruit.

They were really yummy. Because the inari skin itself is a bit sweet, I actually preferred the sweet fruit toppings rather than a savory meat topping for example.

I stabilized the sushi in the bento box with some steamed broccoli. Also in the bottom tier are slices of breaded pork cutlet, asparagus pieces and three gyoza.

On the top, there is more of the black bean salad (so delicious!), broccoli and sugar snaps, persimmon pieces, fresh lychees, blueberries, blackberries, cherries and a chocolate truffle.

June 23rd Snack Bentos

My apologies for the lack of posts. I was on vacation last week and I didn't make a single bento. I truly meant to make bento lunches for BF all week but somehow I managed to sleep in every single day. And I ended up not having time to go for groceries over the weekend, so this morning when I got up to make bento I was pretty short on options and ingredients. Which is how we ended up with snack bentos instead of bento lunches.
I grabbed some onigiris from the fridge and put some faces on them. There are gyoza from a batch I made this weekend and a boiled quail egg for some added protein. For veggies there are edamame (frozen), sweet potato sakuras (I love sweet potatos, they last forever), the last two stalks of asparagus and some sugar snaps. I used a few black sesame seeds to decorate the sakuras and I think they turned out really cute. For fruit there are just two cherries in each and a few blueberries.
I used my Cinnamoroll snack bento box and BF used his blue polka dot snack bento box. From the picture it looks like mine is much larger, but they're actually about the same size, BF's is just deeper. I kind of enjoy the fact that they are different shapes because I like the mental exercise of figuring out two different layouts. It's a good little puzzle to help me wake up in the morning.

We managed to get out for groceries tonight, so it should be back to business as usual. My favorite thing that we picked up was the tiniest bunch of vine tomatoes that I have ever seen in my life. They are so small!! And so pretty still on the vine. I put a quarter next to them so you can get a feel for the size. In the back of the bunch there is the tiniest one of all, it's my favorite.

June 12th Bento Lunches

His and hers bento lunches...

BF's been on vacation all week, but I've been making him bento lunches anyway. Its just as easy to make one bento as to make two, and in some ways it's actually easier. For example, I wanted a few bites of plum in mine today. If I was only making one, then I can either include the whole plum or else the rest of the plum winds up in the fridge, needing to be used up quickly. This way I can use the whole thing but we still get lots of variety in our bentos.

Today we have (on the bottom tiers) strips of beef, leftover chicken curry from the Vietnamese restaurant we went to last night (it's a sweet, curry made with coconut milk - so delcious!), gyoza, steamed broccoli, sugar snaps and asparagus.

On the top tier are a few bites of plum, a container of pomegranate seeds and the usual assortment of berries. BF's bento is a little bit bigger than mine so I also included a chunk of cheddar (hiding under the strawberries) and a couple of daifuku.

June 9th Bento

I found all kinds of new things at the grocery store this week, so I got to try some new foods in today's bento. And I learned a new way to cook - with banana leaves! They only had about six at the store. They're about two and a half feet long and about a foot wide, dark green and shiny. So today we had lemper!
Lemper is an Indonesian food that consists of coconut rice in banana leaves. Here's how I made it:

The night before, cook up some short grain white rice using two thirds coconut milk and one third water. Fried up some ground chicken with a pinch or two of curry powder and some chives, and when it's cooked, splash on a little lemon juice. Cut 5 inch squares of banana leaf and put 1 Tbsp rice in a rough sort of rectangle in the middle of the banana leaf and 1 Tbsp of the chicken mixture on top of that. Fold up the sides and tie with a small strip of banana leaf, and they're ready to go in the fridge. In the morning when making the bento, steam the lemper packets for 15 minutes (this is the longest time I've ever spent cooking anything for a bento by a long shot, but it was so worth it), remove from the steamer and let them cool for a bit before placing them in the bento. I stacked up two in mine.

This was without a doubt the best rice I've ever had in a bento. It was so moist and flavorful, just heavenly. And making them was fun. There's something about wrapping rice in leaves that feels really simple and wholesome. I have more banana leaf cooked foods planned for this week (we went back today and bought two more), so stay tuned!

Because of the small amount of rice, I packed in a whole bunch of sweet potato flowers (boiled with a little butter and cinnamon on them) for additional carbs. And because of the small amount of chicken, I packed two of the mini quiches BF made yesterday, and a couple of bites of cheddar for additional protein. There was some empty space so I threw in a couple leek dumplings.

For vegetables we have the usual broccoli, asparagus, sugar snaps and yellow zucchini. I found some new fruits though! In the bottom corner there is a fresh lychee. I had never tried these before. They have delicious flavour with a bizarre juicy-membrane like consistency. Sorry, that's best way I can think to describe it. Appetizing, right?

There are a couple of cherries next to that (they're down to $4.99 a pound so I've been eating a lot of these), and above that there red and white raspberries. I didn't even know white raspberries existed. Turns out they taste just like red ones, but I like the colour that they add to the bento. There are some blueberries and strawberries, and to finish it off, a cupcake from the batch this weekend.

Here's a diagonal shot too because I liked how the banana leaf looked in this one:

June 5th Bento

This was another unplanned what-do-we-have-in-the-freezer-this-morning bento. I used the six element formula that never lets me down: rice/meat/veggies/fruit/dumplings/dessert. Aside from the fruit and veggies, everything in the bento started its morning in the freezer.

For rice we have a few plain rice cubes and a ground chicken filled triangle onigiri. The meat is marinated lamb pieces (these were so wonderfully spicy and peppery!). There are three gyoza and a hidden bottle of rice vinegar/soy sauce dipping sauce, as well as broccoli, asparagus, sugar snaps, carrot hearts and snow peas for vegetables.

I put some slices of star fruit in the bentos, but BF had never had them before and ended up not liking them. Lots of berries as usual (blackberries, blueberries, raspberries, cherries and strawberries) and a "midnight mint" square. I made a batch of them on the weekend. They're similar to a nanaimo bar but with a green mint filling. The trickiest part was cutting them into tiny bites without cracking the chocolate layer on top. I managed to cut about 15 before I gave up!

Although I didn't plan anything ahead of time, this bento was still really yummy and satisfying. The downside is that the ingredients aren't as creative and it's not the cutest, that's for sure. But when I'm feeling a little lazy in the morning and want a couple of extra minutes of sleep, it's nice to know I have a freezer with lots of great options for lunch!

May 22nd Bento

Last night I felt like I'm starting to come down with something, so I decided that today's bentos would be made entirely with my favorite foods.
On the top we have some chicken sushi. This was my first attempt at making maki rolls with the soy paper (mamenori) and it was delicious and held up really well in the bento. I braised strips of chicken thigh with 1 Tbsp sake and 1 Tbsp ponzu sauce, and rolled them with a strip of green pepper and two chives and then sprinkled them with black sesame seeds after cutting the roll into pieces. They were juicy and crunchy, it was a great combination.

There are three gyoza and my favorite salad of chopped lettuce, mashed avocado and honey. For veggies there are edamame, a few sweet potato flowers, broccoli, sugar snaps, a couple of pieces of asparagus and a few fiddleheads.

For fruit there are apple slices, tangerine wedges, cherries, strawberry slices and blueberries. This is BF's bento so there's a truffle for dessert.

We have a bonus picture today! This is Macaroon, my hedgehog. He went in for surgery yesterday to have an infection removed from his ear and to have his legs examined. I guess they just put a little gas mask over his face to knock him out.

We bought him a few months ago from someone who didn't take good care of him, so he wasn't very healthy and he's never been able to walk properly. Since his surgery yesterday though, he's been the happiest and most active I've ever seen him. We have some antibiotics to give him, so I'm hoping that he will be even healthier in the next few weeks.

He was up this morning chilling with me in the kitchen while I made bento, so I thought I would share a picture of him. He's such a wonderful pet, I just love him to pieces.

May 16th Bento

This morning was one of those mornings where I wished my bento boxes were just a little bit bigger. I wanted to fit so much more in here than there was room for.

We got take out sushi last night because I was feeling lazy and we wanted a sushi late night snack. So there is some avocado maki, sweet potato tempura maki and a couple of unagi (eel) maki. Generally I'm nervous about putting fish sushi in a bento, but but the eel in unagi sushi is actually cooked, so it's not quite as scary.

The main protein in the bento is a chicken 'tournedo' (basically bacon wrapped chicken thigh) that BF cooked up last night. There are two homemade gyoza sitting on top of some asparagus pieces. For veggies there is some sesame fried bok choy, sauteed red pepper slices, steamed snow peas, carrot flowers and broccoli, all tucked into the various nooks and crannies.

For fruit there are blueberries and strawberries, the last of the cherries and half of an apricot. Dessert is a small piece of homemade whole wheat and walnut baklava (I made a batch last night to use up the rest of the phyllo from when I made spanakopita last week or whenever it was).

BF's Second Bento!

BF is so good to me. Last night he took me for sushi and on the way home we walked past a movie theatre. He suggested that we see a movie and I said I couldn't because I needed to get bento stuff ready. So he offered to get up early and make me a bento, even though it was his day off, and we went to a movie.
In the top tier we have pieces of chicken breast fried with balsamic vinegar, dill, oregano and thyme. There are two onigiri, a red bean filled flower onigiri and a cat shaped onigiri coloured with tumeric (He took the picture before he put the face on it, but it was cute). My favorite part was a flower he made in the bottom left from a yellow zucchini slice and some snow peas. There are sweet potato teddy bears, broccoli, asparagus and steamed fiddleheads.

On the bottom there is a gyoza, more broccoli, strawberries, blueberries and the last of the persimmon.

I didn't help at all!

May 12th Bento

BF is taking a couple of days off work, so you get to see my bento instead of his today and tomorrow!

I tried out my new nori punches and mini onigiri molds today.

On the bottom there are three onigiri. The elephant is coloured with purple yam powder mixed with vinegar, the pink heart is a coconut onigiri from the batch in the freezer and the bunny is plain with salt. None of them are filled. There are a few lamb bites in there (from a skewer from this weekend's barbecue), asparagus, broccoli and edamame.

On the top there are three gyoza (I made another batch this weekend, we go through it like crazy!), a boiled quail egg, more edamame and broccoli, star shaped coconut onigiri, persimmon bites, a fried plantain flower, strawberries and blueberries.

May 8th Bento

Last night I was all set to make exciting sushi. I bought a frozen eel filet and was going to make unagi sushi because it's BF's favorite. It was going to have the unagi wrapped on the outside (because I haven't tried to do that yet) and avocado on the inside and it was going to be really pretty.

I cooked the unagi according to the directions on the package and when it came out of the oven, I brought BF into the kitchen to try a bite (I don't like the taste of fish). According to him it was pretty bad. Unsalvageable even. So we had to toss it.

He assures me that it just tasted like a low grade of meat, and had nothing to do with my cooking skills (this was the first time I've ever tried to cook fish). He's so sweet.

Yeah, so we had plain old avocado sushi for bento today :)
As you can see, my lettuce wall building skills are improving a little. I tried using kale this time because it's firmer (although not as delicious as whatever lettuce I was using before).

There is some avocado sushi, some pork bites underneath that, three home made gyoza (there's a bottle of dipping sauce hiding under them), slices of lotus root cooked in vinegar and water (finally, I made a bento where you can see the pretty holes in it!), and asparagus. Fillers are the standard broccoli and sugar snaps.

For fruit there are a couple of cherry tomatoes, a hidden gooseberry, slices of apricot, strawberries and blueberries. Dessert is some kind of truffle (I bought a mixed box and now I can't remember what any of them are!)

May 6th Bento

mmmm....sootball onigiri!

I guess sootballs are characters from the Japanese cartoon, My Neighbor Totoro, but I've never seen it myself. I just think they make cute onigiris! I molded the rice by hand (I didn't have a big circle mold) and wrapped with nori. The eyes are havarti and nori. I filled the onigiri with lotus seed bean paste, but BF said they would have been better with a big piece of fish inside so now I know for next time.

I made beef and asparagus rolls, using the same recipe as last time, but I used shorter pieces of beef this time (about 2") to make a tighter roll. They were a bit tricky to make this small. I generally hold them together with toothpicks as they cook, so that they keep their shape. There are three pieces of asparagus for filling. I let the florette part of the asparagus stick out of the end to make a couple of prettier bites (near the top of the bento).

There are three gyoza (I steamed them today instead of frying), and some sesame fried bok choy filler at the top. On the bottom there are a couple of pieces of broccoli and some sugar snaps. I fried some plantain stars and cut some flowers out of carrot. There was a little bit of space left, and I thought the bento could use more green, so I included some cucumber slices.

For fruit there is a freaky little thing called a mangostein (I usually try to pick up anything that I haven't tried at the grocery store). It's the white bit in the bottom right. It tasted like a mango but was gooeier (is that a word?). I don't think I would repurchase. Then of course there are strawberries and blueberries, and lastly, a bite of strawberry fudge.

May 2nd Snack Bento

I've had a pretty stressful week, so I thought I would save some time this morning by just making a quick snack bento and going out for lunch, so I wasn't even planning to post today, but it actually turned out pretty cute so I figured I'd share it.

So it's not my most creative in terms of design/ingredients. Efficiency, healthiness and using up leftovers were my only concerns this morning.

There are three pork gyoza with dipping sauce and some asparagus tamagoyaki bites. I made more of the avocado salad (with a gooseberry on top) because I had half an avocado in my fridge that needed to be used up. There is steam asparagus, broccoli and snow peas. Under the asparagus are a couple of bites of the lamb from earlier in the week. For fruit I used the other half of yesterday's persimmon, and strawberries and blueberries.

I was halfway to work before I realized I forgot to put in any rice :P

As an aside, BF told me yesterday that he's lost 7lbs since we started having bento lunches instead of going out for lunch every day or skipping it, so that's a great thing! I can't think of anything more important than the health of myself and my loved ones, so I feel really good about contributing to that in a positive way.