| 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.) |
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| Lunch Box 602: Buttoned rice |
[Nov. 11th, 2008|09:52 pm] |
 This box is closer to the traditional Japanese bento format than most of my lunches. Close enough to the right ratio of the various bits (rice, vegetable, protein, fruit), and I've even put the pickled plums in the rice. Well, except there's two instead of one. By accident I bought koume instead of umeboshi, so instead of soft pickled plums (which are actually apricots) I ended up with grape-sized, hard pickled plumricots. They taste the same, but you can't squeeze out the pits, tear 'em up, and mix the bits with the rice, so I included two.
On the non-rice side I have zucchini & onion stir-fry, sauteed beef & mushrooms which I cooked together instead of making them separate as usual (I covered & simmered the mushrooms until they got juicy, then added the beef and stir-fried it the rest of the way), and some apple.
(Website post, with links to recipes.) |
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| Lunch Box 581: Stuck Pig |
[Sep. 11th, 2008|10:47 am] |
 Necessity is the mother of invention. In this case the necessity is my need to use up some meat left over from a recent batch of my Mom's pork chops, and the invention is pork yakitori, in other words strips of pork chop stuck on bamboo skewers and grilled on a George Foreman grill. That doesn't sound like much, but surprisingly they turned out really delicious. I didn't bother seasoning them; they were good right off the stick.
Hiding underneath the meat are zucchini & onion stir-fry and rice, and there's a piece of an pan for dessert.
(Website post, with links to recipes.) |
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| Lunch Box 578: The dark side of tofu |
[Jul. 18th, 2008|09:25 pm] |
 This lunch is almost an outtake. I present it here so you can learn from my misfortune.
The stir-fried teriyaki chicken and zucchini & onion stir-fry are both perfectly all right. However, the marinated, stir-fried tofu - which is below the soy sauce bottle - came out weird. My fridge occasionally has localized ice ages, and the block of tofu was frozen solid. I thawed and cooked it, but the freezing had made the texture strange and spongy. That wouldn't be a problem, except the sponginess allowed it to soak up way more of the teriyaki sauce than I had expected, making it a bit stronger-flavored than I like. So - don't let your tofu freeze, and if you do don't marinate it for very long.
On the other side I have mango and jackfruit, the flavors and textures of which differ more than the colors, and banana bread.
(Website post, with links to recipes.) |
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| Lunch Box 574: Pseudo-escargot |
[Jun. 26th, 2008|09:30 pm] |
 When I go to an Asian market I try to find at least one thing each trip that I've never tried before. This time around I came home with a bag of frozen periwinkles. Winkles, a kind of snail, are commonly eaten in Britain and Ireland, but I've never seen them here. So, I guessed that they'd go well with garlic butter, and simmered them at a low temperature in just that. The result: escargot-like garlic butter periwinkles. Then there's edamame, zucchini & onion stir-fry, mushroom turnovers, and cherries. Can you tell I bought a BIG bag of cherries?
(Website post, with links to recipes.) |
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| Lunch Box 557: I'm a spice girl |
[May. 21st, 2008|07:19 pm] |
 Our of the blue I got the urge to make my Mom's Greek chicken. The problem is, I don't know how, and the recipes I find on the 'net don't match hers. So I did what I always do in said circumstances: hybridize a few recipes and muddle through. I was surprised at how well it turned out. I can't call the result Greek chicken because I used Italian seasoning, but what the heck, it looks like the stuff Mom uses.
So, anyway, here I have sliced up baked chicken breast over rice, zucchini & onion stir-fry, and carrot & raisin salad. When I find out how to make Greek chicken for real I'll post that recipe. Wish me luck, though, as Mom doesn't use recipes or measurements, making it kind of hard to get the info I need.
(Website post, with links to recipes.) |
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| Lunch Box 554: Secondary colors |
[May. 13th, 2008|07:35 pm] |
 I've hardly made any sushi in, what, a year? Now all of a sudden I decide I want lots of it. So, here's some smoked salmon sushi and hantako sushi, the latter of which is my fancy way of saying I strapped half a baby octopus to a rice block. I mainly do that because the tentacles curl up so pretty and spirally, I want to find a way to display them. Then there's some baked purple sweet potato arranged in a way that I thought was artistic, but now looks kind of corny to me. Finally, some zucchini & onion stir-fry and carrot & raisin salad.
(Website post, with links to recipes.) |
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| Lunch Box 553: Bobbed beans |
[May. 12th, 2008|09:15 am] |
 Sushi time! I don't often make California rolls, not because I don't like them, but because I can't seem to get the hang of picking out decent avocados. They may feel right, but when I slice them open they're either hard or browning. This time I got one that's acceptable at least, so here's the sushi.
I made this batch of zucchini & onion stir-fry with tatumas, AKA Mexican zucchini. I don't know if they are actually zucchini or just similar, but they're close enough that I deem any difference insignificant. By the way, I cooked this batch in a cast-iron pan that I seasoned myself. Have you ever seasoned a pan? If you ever need to do that, make sure your kitchen is really, really well-ventilated.
Finally, I have steamed long beans and fresh longans. I always feel bad about cutting long beans - if they aren't long, then... they aren't long! But it does cut down on the unwieldiness and splatter factors.
(Website post, with links to recipes.) |
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| Lunch Box 548: Dueling octopi |
[Apr. 25th, 2008|09:08 pm] |
 Today I have a colorful melange of... colorful stuff. In no particular order: hot dog octopi, baked purple sweet potato, baked sweet potato, zucchini & onion stir-fry, simmered shiitake mushrooms, some Kool-Aid pickles, and grapefruit and coconut gel. The Kool-Aid pickles were made with grape Kool-Aid, which tastes good but makes for dark, icky-looking pickles. Next time I'll use cherry.
Today's my 40th birthday. Yay me. I suppose I should have packed a cupcake or something. Ah well, I'll probably get a cupcake on my way home for dinner tonight.
(Website post, with links to recipes.) |
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| Lunch Box 542: My Mom's Bento Lunch |
[Apr. 17th, 2008|08:26 am] |
 I almost feel like I'm cheating here, although I don't know why. I've got my Mom's pork chops over rice, with the pork chops cut up into bite-sized bits so I won't be hauling a whole pork chop around with my chopsticks. I don't know why that should seem like it's cheating, as I will happily do that with other foods. (Er, cutting them up, not wrangling big chunks of food with my chopsticks.) Maybe it's because it's such a non-Japanese dish. Maybe if I called it 母のポークチョップ it would seem better.
Anyway, on the other side there's some zucchini & onion stir-fry, and orange segments. Those are both fair game for bento, although it would be more authentic if the orange was a mikan.
(Website post, with links to recipes.) |
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| Lunch Box 521: Angry young lunch |
[Feb. 29th, 2008|07:33 pm] |
 I made this lunch when I was very angry. The bus I take from my office simply didn't come, so I had to wait for the next one, lengthening my commute from 2 hours to 3 hours. And it was bloody cold and windy. Needless to say, when I got home I was in no mood to cook. I heated up a can of chunky vegetable soup for dinner and threw some leftovers into the box for my lunch. At times like this, leftovers can save you from peanut butter and jelly.
So, here's what I had sitting in my fridge: takoyaki, French bread pizza, a boiled egg, zucchini & onion stir-fry, grapes, and pink orange. Actually, I did boil the eggs then, but it was right alongside the soup, so it's not like I put any effort into it. It looks like I hacked up the egg in my rage, but really I just didn't use a sharp enough knife.
I'm much better now.
(Website post, with links to recipes.) |
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| 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.) |
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| Lunch Box 490: Welcome to 2008 |
[Jan. 2nd, 2008|09:12 am] |
 I had a long, lazy holiday season, and by the end of it I had enough energy to go all kitchen-ninja. One of the results is the ozoni in today's lunch. Ozoni is a soup traditionally eaten on New Year's Day. I made it on New Year's Eve, actually, and am eating it for lunch on the 2nd, but when you figure in the time zones I figure I hit the right time somewhere in the world. Anyhow, the soup contains chicken and shrimp and mochi and salmon and shiitake and plenty of other good stuff, and I wish my lousy photography didn't make it look so blah. This is, of course, the chunky stuff out of the soup, because if I'd included the liquid it would have turned my bento box into a swamp.
On the side I have zucchini & onion stir-fry, some baked sweet potato, and a chocolate chip cookie. No recipe for the cookie, though it is truly awesome, because it was made by a friend. I may marry her for her cookies. She has, in the past, offered to marry me for my mochi. It would be a marriage made in Heaven the kitchen.
(Website post, with links to recipes.)
PS - If you're familiar with 8-Bit Theater, you may be amused by a recent animation on Newgrounds, Staff-Chucks For Christmas Again? It's based on a guest comic I did, and it humiliates me personally for playing DDR. I love it. |
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| Lunch Box 473: Turkey > fish? |
[Nov. 28th, 2007|08:01 pm] |
 The Thanksgiving fallout continues. I'm gonna keep using leftover poultry until I either run out of turkey or I run out of recipes to shove turkey into, like today's turkey sushi. That's turkey, cucumber, and egg rolled up in rice. I haven't decided whether I'll dip it in soy sauce or gravy.
Then there's stir-fried zucchini peel, a follow-on to yesterday's zucchini & onion stir-fry. And the ever-popular baked purple sweet potato, and finally a few bits of dragon fruit and persimmon.
(Website post, with links to recipes.) |
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| Lunch Box 451: The Temperature At Which Lunch Burns |
[Oct. 17th, 2007|08:21 pm] |
| [ | Tags | | | apple, baked eggplant slices, banana bread, blueberries, box, coconut gel, fruit salad, kiwi fruit, pineapple, rice, salmon saka-mushi, tamarinds, zucchini & onion stir-fry | ] |
 I got home yesterday so not in the mood to do real cooking. Leftovers to the rescue! Here's some salmon saka-mushi over rice, zucchini & onion stir-fry, baked eggplant slices, banana bread, some tamarinds, and a fruit salad made with apple, kiwi fruit, pineapple, blueberries, and coconut gel. The only thing I had to cook was the rice, and I had that going while I cut up fruit and shelled tamarinds.
It seems that this two-tier box is the one I always use when I pack fruit salad. I guess the two parts are most efficient at keeping the fruit and its juices from mixing with the rest of the lunch, and vice versa.
(Website post, with links to recipes.) |
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| Lunch Box 449: Lunch by Crayola |
[Oct. 15th, 2007|07:12 pm] |
 I was very brave this past weekend. I went, all by myself, to an Indian restaurant and ordered food I've never had before. The reason this is a big deal for me is that all my memories of Indian food are of the super-spicy food my mother liked - hot pink chicken and so on - which I could not eat. The spices were to the flavor of food as an air raid siren is to music. It takes a bit of work to overcome those kinds of memories and give something another go, but, what the heck, there's an Indian restaurant near me that I've never visited in the 10 years I've had my condo.
Anyhow, the food was good, I had mild chicken tikka masala with some fluffy rice. The bright orange of the sauce alarmed me initially - pushing those childhood memory buttons, you know - but it tasted fine. I also had some fruit-stuffed naan which was more like pastry than bread. (I did get ambushed by a pre-meal chiplike thing that was mild when I ate it but caused my tongue to burn afterwards. I'll know better next time.)
So! For lunch today, I have leftover chicken tikka masala over rice and some of my homemade naan, which I tore into bits because I like the look of torn naan, OK? I also have zucchini & onion stir-fry, and purple imo-yokan because I didn't have a leftover green veggie or dessert.
(Website post, with links to recipes.) |
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| Lunch Box 442: Breaking bread |
[Oct. 3rd, 2007|07:59 pm] |
 Got some more new stuff here! I just made naan - East Indian flatbread - for the first time, and quite liked it, so here's a bit of that, torn into chunks and buttered up. Below that is some omelet with turkey bacon and mushrooms. Continuing counterclockwise, we find zucchini & onion stir-fry, baked eggplant slices, and purple imo-yokan. Imo-yokan is a jellied sweet potato dessert, and making it is so much work that I rarely do it, but once I got the idea of making it with purple sweet potatoes I couldn't resist.
I had planned to pack some roe in with this meal. I found a good recipe for broiled roe in The Joy of Cooking - and if you can't trust those recipes, what can you trust? - and gave it a go. And... well, the taste wasn't bad, but the look and the texture... I'm sorry, but it was too much for me. I threw it out and whipped up an omelet as a replacement. Most new recipes I try turn out well, but if you don't have a few failures you aren't taking enough risks!
(Website post, with links to recipes.) |
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| Lunch Box 436: Hidden rice |
[Sep. 21st, 2007|08:39 pm] |
 Not much to say about this lunch other than the undeniable fact that oden over rice, zucchini & onion stir-fry, and mochi are all very tasty. Well, OK, you could deny that fact, and in so doing dispute its factuality. If you wish to, go right ahead, I don't mind.
Oh, one thing - I packed the rice as a buffer between the oden and zucchini & squash and the mochi. I didn't want the sweet mochi to get all wet and seafoody or vegetabley, so I arranged it so any spare juice would get absorbed by the rice. I'd heard of people putting rice on top of stews and other potentially messy items to act as a kind of lid, so I turned it upside down to let the rice act as a... diaper?
(Website post, with links to recipes.) |
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| Lunch Box 419: Spam attack |
[Aug. 15th, 2007|08:06 pm] |
 I would have posted this lunch yesterday, but I was ill yesterday, so this lunch sat in my fridge, alone and uneaten. (I make my lunches the night before and store 'em in my fridge overnight. Or over two nights, as the case may be.)
Anyhow, here be some Spam musubi, always a treat. The zucchini & onion stir-fry is a little unusual in that I didn't peel the zucchini as I normally would. It alters the flavor and texture a bit but, what the heck, there's nutrition and stuff in the skin - there has to be, it's dark green - and I was in the mood to keep the nutrition in. Then some light-fried plantain chips, bulla, and finally orange segments.
I should have known I was going to call in sick when I packed the orange segments. Whenever I'm unwell I develop a craving for orange. Orange tastes like health itself. You know those magic healing potions in video games? Orange juice.
(Website post, with links to recipes.) |
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| Lunch Box 412: Georgia peach |
[Aug. 3rd, 2007|07:05 pm] |
 You know you're lazy when you use the recipes printed on food packaging. Well, I got lazy and used the tomato baked whiting recipe I found on the back of a bag of frozen-slabs-o-fish, and it cooked up quickly and tasted quite good, so here it is, served over a bed of zucchini & onion stir-fry. This was actually a good combination to cook, because the zucchini & onion takes just as long to cook as the fish takes to bake. Bung the fish in the oven, stir up the fry, then 20 minutes later serve both up hot.
On the other side I have bulla and a fruit salad made with peach, mango, and blueberries. And some mini-carrots, which I don't normally include because I eat them all day at home - they're my typical munchie - but I needed something for that last little slot in my bento box.
(Website post, with links to recipes.) |
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