| Lunch Box 606: Foursquare |
[Nov. 20th, 2008|10:02 pm] |
 Here's a recapitulation of my favorite meal from Benihana: stir-fried beef, zucchini & onion stir-fry, rice, and sauteed mushrooms. And naan, which has nothing to do with Benihana and everything to do with deliciousness and I encourage you all to try making it yourselves.
The night before I made this I put some beef on the fridge to defrost. When I went to cook it I found that I'd defrosted some sukiyaki beef instead of regular stir-fryin' meat. So, oh well, I cooked what I had, and it tasted just fine, though it was kind of strange to have such thin-sliced beef by itself as opposed to mixed in with other items or in pseuki yaki.
(Website post, with links to recipes.) |
|
|
| Lunch Box 600: Vegetarian octopus |
[Nov. 3rd, 2008|09:42 pm] |
 Happy day-before-voting-day! To those in the US who have not yet voted, I wish you luck in the lines tomorrow. I voted via absentee ballot, which requested it before news got around about how out-of-control the lines would be. Talk about lucking out.
Not that that has anything to do with my lunch, which starts with a hot dog octopus and some omurice. It's a regular hot dog, not a tofu substitute; the thing itself appears to be a vegetarian, the way it's all over that steamed broccoli. Then there's sauteed mushrooms, baked purple sweet potato, and baked white sweet potato. This is, thankfully, the last of a lot of leftovers. Which means that I'm going to have to cook tonight.
(Website post, with links to recipes.) |
|
|
| Lunch Box 599: Powers of Two |
[Oct. 31st, 2008|07:17 pm] |
 It's been a while since I've made iridori, which is basically Japanese chicken & vegetable stew. This time I varied the recipe by substituting lotus roots for bamboo shoots. It didn't change the flavor much, but it added some texture variety, plus it just looks neat. On the other side I have rice balls, baked purple sweet potato, baked white sweet potato, steamed broccoli, and sauteed mushrooms.
(Website post, with links to recipes.) |
|
|
| Lunch Box 520: Crimson flower |
[Feb. 28th, 2008|08:11 pm] |
 Here we have a recapitulation of the very first bento I ever blogged: my Benihana Ripoff Special. Marinated stir-fried beef, zucchini & onion stir-fry, rice, and sauteed mushrooms.
This, to me, is the classic make-it-yourself Japanese meal, plagiarized from my favorite teppan-yaki house. I don't usually make it with lavender rice, but, hey, why cook up another batch when I still have leftovers? Anyway, this is the first stuff I really figured out how to cook as opposed to just boiling or microwaving or, in extreme cases, actually reading directions and mixing things together. Those old spaghetti-and-ragu days. I might still be in that rut if I hadn't tried the bento thing out of curiosity, and then set up a website when I realized how well it worked for me.
(Website post, with links to recipes.) |
|
|
| Lunch Box 470: No Idea What To Call This |
[Nov. 19th, 2007|09:57 pm] |
 Today's lunch is sponsored by Things I Need To Clear Outta My Fridge Before Thanksgiving. I have a rolled omelet with mushrooms, cheddar cheese, and spinach. I mixed some beet juice in with the eggs, and they turned a cool pink-orange, but the color faded during the cooking phase. Ah well. Hiding under the omelet are some sauteed mushrooms. I have stir-fried zucchini, which I stir-fried in butter, mmm. Unsurprisingly I have baked purple sweet potato, and perhaps surprisingly I have kushi dango. The latter is supposed to be made with steamed rice dumplings, but I had all these ggul ddeok (Korean rice cakes) that I decided I was not too thrilled with - they're a bit bland - so I skewered them and covered 'em with kushi dango sauce. Close enough, ne?
(Website post, with links to recipes.) |
|
|
| Lunch Box 321: Thanks, George |
[Mar. 13th, 2007|07:48 pm] |
 Wowie! Leftovers!
Well, not really. Only two items - and I'll let you guess which ones they are - are true leftovers. The rest were cooked specifically for the dinner that this lunch is a spinoff of. Which is an ungrammatical way of saying, OK, these are leftovers, but I ain't cooking in the morning!
Anyway, here's some medium rare grilled beef a la Foreman mixed with sauteed mushrooms. There's zucchini & onion stir-fry and baked Japanese sweet potato separated by a snake of baked plantain. (The plantain was turning black and weird looking, meaning the fruit, when cooked, is so sweet it's almost desserty.) Finally, there are some strawberries and a green bean mochi.
I really like this bento box. It has removable trays so you can microwave parts and leave other things cold. It's just the right size. And it has a clear lid so you can see what's inside. That last bit makes it hard to wait for lunchtime, but one must be willing to suffer in the name of coolness.
(Website post, with links to recipes.) |
|
|
| Lunch Box 39: Plagiarism |
[Aug. 14th, 2005|03:40 pm] |
 This is the first Japanese meal I've cooked with any regularity. Er, not this specific meal pictured here, but the basic assembly. I figured out how to make the stir-fried chicken, zucchini & onion stir-fry, and sauteed mushrooms by watching Benihana chefs. It was for this meal (except back then I made it with beef - chicken and shrimp were later innovations) that I sought out Nishiki rice. (Regular rice is nearly impossible to eat with chopsticks.) I've come to think of those four items as one unit, since I cook them together and the separate recipes interlock.
And in the corner, a manjuu and an pan. I'm almost done with that first big batch.
Yes, there's nothing really new here. However, the chicken is cut into bite-size pieces, the way they do in Benihana, whereas when I showed it before I had strips and big chunks. And that makes a difference. (Because I said so, that's why.)
(Website post, with links to recipes.) |
|
|
| navigation |
| [ |
viewing |
| |
most recent entries |
] |
| |
|
|
![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small}
mylunch's journal
