Year of the Bento Part Five: Bento Box Two

OK, I have so much to share, it’s hard to make myself bring the blog up to date in the right order, and not just skip to the end, which is the part I am giddiest about. My bento box and accessories finally arrived this morning, so I’ve had a fun evening playing with my new toys and packing myself up a nice lunch for tomorrow. However, before all that, there was bento box two, a great improvement on bento box one I’m sure you’ll agree (or you will face my wrath).

I took it to work for lunch today, and I must admit to feeling a bit self conscious about it; that odd combination of abashed and proud, if anyone else knows what I mean? Anyway, nobody flushed my head down the toilet or teased me for having a fancy lunch, not even good-humouredly. Not that you could good humouredly flush someone’s head down the toilet, even if you were laughing at the time. Also, it served as a warm up for tomorrow’s properly fancy lunch in my gen-you-ine bento box, with my chopsticks in their own case and everything – this was an intermediate step.

Box two contained some of the pork, one of the brown rice onigiri, one of the summer rolls and one of the rice hearts that I had cooked and frozen on Friday. Then I added some salad items: cucumber that I made stripey by peeling strips of the skin off before slicing; tomatoes cut into little flowers using the garnishing tool that I got free at a knife demonstration years ago (knew it would eventually come in handy) and some carrot sticks. I tried to make carrot flowers but kept just breaking them, so I’ll put in some more practise hours and bust them out once I’ve got them perfect. Finally, I added some cooked veg; the tenderstem broccoli from Waitrose, steamed in the microwave, and sliced courgette and mushrooms cooked in a spot of oil and seasoned with salt and black pepper.

The only frozen item that wasn’t a success was the summer roll. Surprisingly, the rice wrapper was fine, but the inside was too vinegary – my own fault for putting too much vinegar in there, although possibly the rawness of the grated veg had something to do with it? Cooked veg might be less squishy and therefore release less liquid when I bit into it. Otherwise though, all the freezing was worthwhile, and I am glad of that – it means I can put together nice lunches without too much effort, though on quiet evenings like tonight it’ll be worth putting a bit of effort in to have something fresh and different. It’s worth noting that the onigiri didn’t hold together once I’d got a fork into it, possibly because I used Italian rice (but it was short grain!) or possibly because I wasn’t convincing enough in shaping it before I froze it. Anyway, it tasted fine, and the joy of putting the pork and the sauteed veg in individual cupcake cases (apart from my food not touching) was that there was a little liquid in the bottom of each that I could mix the rice into, so I didn’t miss any delicious food by being too abashed to lick the cases clean.

Thus concludes my second tale of bento making, and this one hit the mark – it was nice to look at and good to eat; in fact, it kept me going from lunchtime until 9pm, which is a real achievement. Don’t get me wrong, I was hungry from about half six, but not so hungry that I couldn’t wait. An all round success. Huzzah!

Smoked Tofu and Other Exotic Ingredients

When I say exotic, I mean new to me. Some of you will undoubtedly chuckle at my wide eyed food innocence. I went to Waitrose today and picked up lots of quality gear; much of it is for the pizzas the G man and I are making tonight, and then some was for use in future bentos, or just to try some new things. Here are the most interesting items from my shopping basket:

Up the top are wee bags of prepped veg – I got one mini sprouts and two tenderstem broccoli. They’re not exotic but very handy in little bags like that, so there you are. Not as cheap as just buying the veg and preparing it yourself, but sometimes I don’t mind paying for convenience. Sharon fruit and kumquat are fruits I’ve never tried before; I’ve seen sharon fruit (or persimmon) in a lot of bento related recipes lately, so I picked some up. I haven’t tried it yet, will do some more research on what’s best to do with it before I slice into one of them. The kumquats looked a perfect size for putting in the corner of a lunchbox, but I tried one of them when I got in and found it a bit too bitter to be very enjoyable, so I’ll have to think of something to do with them; perhaps I’ll candy them. Or maybe I could slice them up and mix with other things to balance out the bitterness. Something to think about another day.

The smoked tofu was the thing I was most interested to try – it has almonds and sesame seeds mixed through it, too. It tastes like if someone made a hotdog out of wholegrain bread; yes, it is unusual, but I like it. The initial taste and texture is hotdog or smoked sausage, but that gives way to nuttiness and chewiness, which is where the bread comparison comes in.

 

I think it’ll be a nice filling addition to my lunches, either cubed or maybe in a sauce, with a side of rice.

I had gone to the shops without eating, so when I got back in I was starving and put together a bowl of noodles for myself using the tofu and some veg. I also used three slices of the spicy pickled garlic I made, expecting that to be enough to give lots of flavour, but it turns out that a lot of the spiciness of the garlic is down to it being raw. I’m encouraged by that, I had thought the garlic might be unusable because it was too spicy, so it’s good the know that cooking it takes away the extreme flavour. To make my lunch, I cooked half a block of fine egg noodles then drained and sprinkled with sesame oil, to stop them clumping or sticking. In the same pot, I cooked the pickled garlic slices along with some courgette slices and frozen spring onion rounds, in a drop of rapeseed oil. After a couple of minutes I added some slices of romano pepper, some cubes of smoked tofu and the noodles, then stirred through with a good splash of light soy. I garnished with sesame seeds to finish.

Now, off to plan tomorrow’s bento!

Year of the Bento Part Four: Portable Lentil Dal

The title of this post has given me more trouble than the recipe – is it dal, dahl or dhal? Is it redundant to put the word lentil in there? I couldn’t decide, and neither could the internet, do I just made a decision before I got sucked into a black hole of doubt and spent hours trying to decide what the most reputable authority would be, and then copying it. I’m sure you all know what I mean anyway – though the portable bit, well, there’s the mystery. Until the next paragraph.

This is a recipe based on both this one from The Hungry Tiger, and this one from Just Bento – I made a couple of adjustments though, of course. Here is my own version of the recipe:

• 1 cup uncooked red lentils or dal
• several turns of a grinder containing salt, garlic and chili
• 1 tbsp tomato puree
• 1 tsp garam masala
• 1 tsp tandoori masala
• 1/2 tsp turmeric
• 1 tiny onion, finely chopped
• 2 garlic cloves, finely chopped
• spot of rapeseed oil
• small handful coriander leaves, finely chopped
• smoked sea salt and pepper
• sesame seeds and nigella/kalongi/black onion seeds to coat

Alright, let us begin. First, put the lentils into a pot with 2 1/2 cups of water, season with the salt/garlic/chili and place over a medium heat until they boil. Then, turn the heat down and simmer, stirring often, for about 30 minutes. Pay particular attention to stirring the lentils in the latter half of the cooking time, as they’ll want to stick to the pot as the water is absorbed and your job is to deny them that pleasure. You want the lentils to be mushy but not too wet – they’ll thicken and dry a little as they cool as well, but you want them to be almost all the way done when you take them off the heat. The picture above is of the mix once the next steps have been completed.

Once they’re off the heat, add the tomato puree and spices, and mix through. Leave the lentils to cool as you saute the onion and garlic, with the rapeseed oil, in a small frying pan. Once the onion is soft and transparent, add the contents of the frying pan to the lentil mix, and stir through again. Taste and season if required. Now, put the oven on to heat to 180C.

Pour out the two kinds of seeds onto a chopping board and mix evenly, then start lifting out and shaping little balls of the lentil mix. You’ll need quite a lot of seeds if you want to coat the snacks completely, like I have, or you can ease back on them a little and just coat them lightly. It always takes more than you think to coat stuff like this, I find, so be prepared to have to pour out more half way through (and, if you’re like me, again at the very end to do the last two). I measured and shaped mine by hand, so they’re a bit uneven, but if you have a measuring or scooping device that’s the right size then go for it. Roll the ball in the seed mix, then place on a baking tray lined with foil or baking paper. Whichever you use, grease it to stop the portable dals from sticking. I forgot to do this. It wasn’t the end of the world, but neither was it perfect. So, it was just normal, I suppose. Still, we may as well strive for perfection, eh?

Once you’ve finished, put the sheet in the oven and bake for 10 minutes, then turn them over and bake for another 10. Remove from the oven and cool on the baking sheet. Done!

These are another item for my frozen bento library, I feel more confident about the freezing and reheating suitability of these – the texture is mushy already, how far wrong can it go? I think they’ll be best with some kind of dip, but I did eat two straight from the oven and they were good, if not great, on their own. I love the crunchy texture from the seeds contrasting with the soft middle – they’re a bit like a baked pakora, actually. I would definitely recommend playing with the spices and flavours – if you’re not freezing them, get some frozen peas in there in the last three minutes of lentil cooking time, or some spinach would be good too. It’s a highly adaptable recipe, I can see me making different versions of these in future.

Final thing to note – each snack (this recipe made 18) is worth about 50 calories, I think, allowing for 1 tsp of seeds per snack. Most of the calories come from the seeds – without them you’re looking at 20 calories each. If you are relying on this information, though, you should know that I’m not counting the onion, garlic or tomato puree, the healthy eating plan I take advice from (but don’t follow) has them as ‘free’ foods.