Archive for April, 2007

Potsticker lunch with quick cucumber salad

Morning prep time: 10 minutes (12 min. for 2 lunches, but the potstickers take 9 minutes). I didn’t have any leftovers to incorporate into this meal, so it was all made in the morning: gyoza, cucumber salad, and mango. The timeline for today’s lunch was actually very straightforward: get the store-bought frozen potstickers going in the frying pan (quick fry, then add warm water and cover), slice the cucumber with the quick cutter and salt (let rest), cut & pack the mango, and nuke the cream cheese to soften, rinse/wring out the cucumbers. Finish up the potsticker cooking and put on a plate to cool. Mix the cucumber with the cream cheese and pepper, pack that in the lunch, then pack the potstickers. The dipping sauce was already in the little containers, stored in the refrigerator, so those were just grab and go. Wrapped cheese and grape tomatoes fill the gaps and provide color. Ta da!

I adapted a recipe for 3-minute cucumber and cream cheese salad from Japanese cookbook Oishii Obento (published by Seitosha). Very few ingredients (cucumber, cream cheese, salt and pepper), and prep flies by with the use of a cheap mandoline-type slicer. Recipe below.

I picked up this slicing multi-tool for a few dollars at an Asian kitchenware store a few years ago to replace another I broke. It’s a quick slicer, wavy cutter, vegetable peeler, daikon grater and ginger grater — all in one. It’s what I reach for when I want a small amount of thinly cut vegetables, but don’t need the adjustability (or hassle) of my mandoline. Click on the photo for a larger view with notes. More tricked-out products would include the Japanese Benriner and the V-slicer, but a quick Amazon search turns up a few cheap alternatives: a green Kuhn Rikon Quick Slice Mandoline, a red Kyocera Adjustable Handheld Ceramic Slicer, and a white Norpro Mandoline. (Full disclosure: I just signed up with Amazon, so using these links when shopping with Amazon anyway helps support Lunch in a Box.)

Quick Cucumber and Cream Cheese Salad Recipe

4-5 inches of cucumber (I used English/Japanese cucumber with few seeds, but you could scoop the seeds out of a regular cucumber for the same effect)
1 ounce of cream cheese (or less, to taste)
black pepper to taste (I like freshly ground, but use what’s handy)

1. Thinly slice cucumber, and put it in a colander in a bowl or sink. Lightly salt and mix up.
2. Let the salted cucumber rest for at least one minute, then rinse off excess salt if necessary and wring out the moisture with your hands and a paper towel. This keeps the cucumber from shedding water into your lunch after you’ve packed it.
3. Microwave the cream cheese until soft (20 seconds in a 500W microwave, 10 seconds in a 1100W microwave)
4. Mix the cucumbers with the softened cream cheese and pepper to taste.

Bug’s lunch is similar. He attacked the potstickers first with his hands, then moved on to the rest. He used the little fork for the mango, but I had to help him with the cucumber (his first bites were way too big). If I were sending him off to eat this lunch on his own, I’d cut the cucumber a little thicker so that it’d be easier for him to get little bites.

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Published by Biggie on April 6th, 2007 tagged bento, dumplings or buns, equipment, for kids, recipe, tutorial or how to | 28 Comments »

Speedy sandwich lunches

Morning prep time: 5 minutes each (10 min. total). In a lunch very similar to this one, I packed Costco chicken salad sandwiches on whole wheat toast with cheese and lettuce in two collapsible sandwich cases (equipment review here). Bug’s lunch below is actually quite large as I made it to be shared with his little friend on our outing to the children’s museum. It adds non-messy sides of leftover roasted asparagus from dinner (tips cut off at Bug’s request), dried apricots, a stack of two wrapped cheeses, and cherry tomatoes as gap fillers to stabilize the lunch for transport. The sandwich case is one that I got for US$1 at a local dollar store (Ichiban Kan in San Francisco), held together with a cheap elastic lunch band (from Daiso). They folded up nice and flat after lunch because I didn’t use hard plastic food cups inside.

Mine is similar, with the sandwich cut into thirds instead of halves.

In other news:

I’ve added resource links in the column to the left; have a look.
The Daily Tiffin food and lifestyle blog would like you to show them your lunch: details here.

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Published by Biggie on April 5th, 2007 tagged equipment, for kids, poultry, sandwich case, sandwich or wrap | 4 Comments »

Speed cooking technique: Multi-broiling

Morning prep time: 7 minutes each (14 minutes for two lunches). Today’s speed tip is a variation on the multitasking theme: broil multiple items at once on a foil-lined pan for fast and easy cleanup (oven or toaster oven).

While I worked on the rest of the lunch, I broiled a pan of asparagus with sesame oil, and little foil cups of shimeji mushrooms topped with a squirt of ketchup and parsley (’recipe’ below). Leftover refrigerated rice was warmed in the microwave, shaped into little onigiri in a mold, then wrapped with pre-cut nori or rolled in black sesame seeds. I blotted dry and cut up some leftover Chilean stewed beef lengua from dinner, as excess sauce can get into other dishes and lead to bacterial growth when the lunch is kept at room temperature. Little tomato “gap fillers” stabilize the lunch for transport, and add nice natural color (aiming for five natural food colors for good nutrition).

Here are the two items ready to go under the broiler. Japanese bento cookbooks often tout broiling all three lunch dishes at once (1 protein main and 2 veggie subs), but I already had leftover beef in the fridge so it wasn’t necessary today. I stirred the asparagus (with sesame oil, salt and pepper) once about two minutes in, then took it out together with the mushrooms after about 4-5 minutes total cook time.

Bug’s lunch was pretty much the same, with the addition of some leftover fingerling potatoes and a little plastic pick for little hands. I used up all of our leftover rice making the onigiri and didn’t have quite enough starch according to the Japanese nutritional guidelines for bentos, so in with the potatoes. New development, though — Bug decided today that he’s no longer a fan of black sesame seeds, so together we picked most of them off before the little rice balls were ‘acceptable’. Sigh. Little things like that make me really appreciate what a remarkably unpicky eater Bug normally is.

Broiled Mushroom Cup Recipe

shimeji mushrooms, bottom cut off and mushrooms separated (you can substitute other mushrooms, thinly sliced for fast cooking)
ketchup
parsley, chopped (or other herb for garnish)

1. Place two foil muffin liners inside each other for extra stability, then put on a baking sheet. You can also use shallow, extra-thick foil cups for baking.
2. Add a handful of mushrooms, top with a squirt of ketchup.
3. Put under broiler (or in a toaster oven) for 4-5 minutes or until lightly browned. Garnish with chopped parsley.

Let these cool before packing up into a closed lunch container to avoid condensation for two reasons:

The heat creates a vacuum effect in the box and makes it difficult for you (or your child) to open the lid.
The moisture from the condensation creates a favorable environment for bacterial growth when the lunch is kept at room temperature before eating (which this was). See my post on food safety.

Some bento boxes (such as Bug’s 430ml box above) have a little steam vent on the lid that you can open to avoid the vacuum effect.

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Published by Biggie on April 4th, 2007 tagged bento, for kids, glutenfree, lactose free, onigiri or sushi, potatoes, recipe, rice, tips, tutorial or how to | 17 Comments »

Magnets to track freezer inventory

A number of my speedy lunch tips involve making food ahead of time and freezing it in individual portions to throw into a packed lunch. Keeping track of what’s in your freezer is key to being able to cycle through it regularly (avoiding freezer burn and food waste). I’ve tried different techniques, but haven’t been able to stick with anything too demanding that requires me (or my husband) to write down exactly what we take out or put in each time (ack). I did find a pretty straightforward technique in Shufu no Tomo’s book on freezing in my collection of food books, though: make magnets using photos from the weekly supermarket advertising pages, magnetic sheets sold at dollar stores, and tape. I sometimes scan through new ad circulars as they come to see if there are additional photos that might be good freezer magnet candidates.

You can work out your own system, but here I’ve put magnets indicating the food I have on the narrow side of the freezer door, and food I don’t have (but might pick up sometime) on the right hand side. I actually use these magnets on our large chest freezer in the basement (i.e. the Black Hole for frozen food), but brought some upstairs to show on a regular refrigerator. Anyone else have a handy system? Tell us about it! (UPDATE: Also check out the round-up of ways readers organize their lunch gear.)

To make the magnets, you can use any thin magnets — I picked up a big yellow magnetic sheet from Daiso (dollar store), and also used paper-thin freebie magnets we’ve accumulated over the years from pizza delivery, online ordering, etc. Cut out little photos of food you commonly freeze, tape it to the thin magnet with either double-sided tape or regular tape looped over onto itself, and cut to shape. I disregard brand names, of course: I don’t have Eggo waffles in my freezer, but I do have homemade mini pancakes for packed lunches and fast breakfasts for Bug.

If you wanted to get elaborate with this, craft stores stock special magnetic products you could use with custom photos of your own choosing, and you could finish the top and seal the edges for durability. That’s a little much for me, but I bet they’d be cool magnets! For larger views of either photo, click on it, then click the “All Sizes” button above the photo.

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