Super-packed Bento

Upper level: jasmine rice and umeboshi, broccoli with rice vinegar and mirin, sesame tofu.

Lower level: Kiwi, cherry tomatoes, clementine, baby carrots.

I stir-fried the broccoli in a tiny bit of sesame oil; then for the last 3 minutes of
cooking I poured about 2 teaspoons of rice vinegar and 1 tsp of mirin over the broccoli and just simmered that. It was so good!

I've been wrapping bento box Christmas gifts (share the obsession!) along with copies of Susan Yuen's lovely Hawaii's Bento Box Cookbook for all my friends who have expressed even the tiniest interest in bento. I hope that in 2010 more of us will be sharing the love of bento!

Noodle Mania

I loooove noodles. So imagine my joy when Amazon sent me a message that this book had been published. How nice that Amazon.com has such psychic powers. I try to resist these little ad placements but....in this case it was kismet. I literally could eat noodles every day at least once.

The author, Corinne Trang, has eaten noodles in all parts of the world and has the equivalent of a Ph.D. in Noodleology; she grew up with several different kinds of Asian grannies and aunties making their own noodles and fighting over the best combos of toppings and broths.

Trang sets our minds at ease by saying that any noodle can be used in any dish. There are better and worse choices but no catastrophes with this divine ingredient. The book has great recipes like this one:


Somen noodles with spicy shrimp curry and peas!! I need to make this asap; what a great winter lunch or supper. There are tons more great looking recipes for all the types of noodles, and explanations of the way these types came to be.

It also has great general cooking tips including a section on what you need to have in your kitchen (both foods and tools) in order to make great Asian recipes of all kinds. She is very economical and practical, and I plan to buy a copy of this book for both my sons when they get a bit more settled in their adult lives.

Today's bentos reflected the noodle influence:



Soba with the basic noodle sauce consisting of a splash of mirin, a splash of rice vinegar, a splash of soy sauce, and a few drops of sesame oil to make it all stick. Into the soba went some previously barbecued pork, and some sweet red pepper rings. Shoyu tamago (soy-soaked hard boiled egg) with black sesame and fluffy salt furikake.

There is also another attempt at carrot kinpira, not a rousing success (tasted like salty carrot slaw). Need to look around for a better recipe. And some tomatoes from the frantic harvest prior to frost.

So noodles for everyday and everyone! is my new motto. Noodle up!

Cilantro Salad: Great Bento Filler

If you love cilantro, or often get a big beautiful bunch of it in your farm share like I do, you may sometimes come up against the old "How to use this up?" question. You can only eat so much salsa, only eat Thai noodles and spring rolls so often (well, pretty often!!).

So here's the solution: cilantro salad. The recipe can be found in my new favorite cookbook DONBURI MANIA by my guy Kentaro Kobayashi, also the author of my last new favorite cookbook BENTO LOVE.

DONBURI MANIA is what the title suggests, but also more, since Kobayashi also includes some donburi sides like soups and salads.

Cilantro coarsely chopped, fresh ginger and garlic, sesame oil, soy sauce, lemon or lime juice (I used lime and loved it), and a tad of sugar. Mix it up and let it sit for awhile, then stuff it into your bento next to some beautiful rice and voila.

Speaking of rice: Kobayashi loves him some rice. Listen to this verdict on what's really important in a good donburi:

"Can't get enough rice? That's the sign of a properly prepared donburi. Sure, the stuff on top takes a lot more time and preparation, but all of that, really, is meant to enhance the rice.It just serves to make the rice more delectable."

And his philosophy of donburi is this: "The goal of donburi is to create a dish that enhances the innate sweetness of rice".

How do you like that little paradigm shift? I love this guy.

Here's Jan's bento from yesterday, which has only one slightly unusual thing and it isn't the panda lid:



On the left: cheeses, Triscuits, Hello Kitty strawberry filled cookies, and a chocolate (Hello junk food; I was in a hurry); on the right, roast potatoes, cherry tomatoes, chicken, and -- the unusual thing -- Thai basil pesto. This recipe calls for fish sauce, rice vinegar, and few other non-traditional pesto ingredients and it is awesome!! I had scored a huge bunch of Thai basil at the Harvest Festival Saturday and this pesto kind of called my name as a noodle adornment.

Fun fun fun!

Here's the cover of Kobayashi's book: You have to love a cookbook named after mental dysfunction.

BENTO LOVE: New Cookbook

RATING: ***** 5 Stars on the BENTOMETER!!

Bento Love: Easy Japanese Cooking, by Kentaro Kobayashi, just came out and I had pre-ordered a copy from Amazon for $17.50. It looks like it will really help me move up to the next level in my Japanese cooking, because it is really a "how-to" cookbook rather than just a list of recipes and ingredients.

For example, take this paragraph on how to prepare a chicken thigh for cooking:

"Keep in mind: chicken cooks slowly. So don't forget to cover it and let it cook through. Enjoy the flavor of yakitori-style chicken for lunch!...

Take a single chicken thigh and poke about a dozen holes through the skin with a knife for even cooking and to prevent skin from shriveling up. Remove fat with cooking scissors and slice the surface of the meat repeatedly to break up tendons. Rub a very generous amount of salt (about 1 Tbsp) into both sides and sprinkle with pepper. Now you're ready to cook..."

Did you know all these tricks? The book is full of them. The author loves meat so the bento suggestions are often meat plus rice plus a small amount of veg.



Here's a look at the table of contents so you can see if you're interested:



I'm sorry that blogger's photo uploader is deciding these pics must be sideways; I can't figure out how to short-circuit that.



Here's one bento I plan to try to replicate very soon; the idea of yummy salted turnip greens over rice is just calling my name:



But almost every bento looks so good I think I'll have some terrific ideas and know-how to make the coming academic year really SUPERBENTO!!

The book is not purely Japanese food either, though its American and European influenced bento menus have the neat touch of strangeness that characterizes Planet Bento in my mind. So we get one lunch that consists of two small sub sandwiches: one with an avocado omelet in it, the other with a sausage. You see what I mean.

The only disappointment I had with the book was this: Mr. Kobayashi appears to be unaware of the essential food group known as dessert. If we want sweets in our bento or on the side, we are on our own. I went confidently to the back of the book, that ghetto where desserts usually reside in our cookbooks, and lo there was nothing but an explanation of common ingredients. No cute rice puddings, no home-made Pocky, no cute moshi. it's as if dessert did not even exist.

Well Mr. Kobayashi, man does not live by meat and rice alone.

However this is a small thing and a true sweets-hound like myself does not really need much help to figure out ways to stuff those crucial calories into a corner of a bento box.

I think you'll like this book if you are not an expert cook of Japanese food already, and if you want some ideas to refine your preparation process. If you have sometimes had the thought, "This just ought to taste better!" about some of your Japanese cooking, as I have, this book will definitely bridge the gap in many areas.