Archive for May, 2007

Croquette lunches and metal containers

Contents: Corn cream croquettes with tonkatsu sauce (a popular kids’ bento item), sliced cucumber, plain rice ball with strips of pre-cut nori, sliced takuan pickles, and slices of kamaboko (fish cake) cut to loosely resemble rabbits. The side dish holds cherries and grapes. Bug devoured the croquettes as finger food right off the bat, then the fruit. He wasn’t much interested in the kamaboko or takuan — some days he is, some days he isn’t.

Morning prep time: 10 minutes to pack, 10 minutes to let everything totally cool before closing the lids. The croquettes were frozen from a store, and just needed to be deep fried in a little pot for 3.5 minutes. For best food safety, I heated the kamaboko through (in hot water I was making something else in). The rice was refrigerated leftovers, so I heated it in the microwave and quickly shaped it with salted, wet hands (you could also use the twisted plastic wrap method).

Packing: The takuan pickles turned the kamaboko yellow where they touched, so if Bug were sensitive about things like that I could use a food divider or a piece of lettuce. I did use a food divider to keep the moist cucumber away from the crispy croquettes, and let the lunches totally cool before closing the lid to avoid soggy croquettes. I also let the croquettes cool on a little wire rack before packing them in the box (they take extra time, but kids inhale them!).

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Published by Biggie on May 11th, 2007 tagged bento, equipment, fish or seafood, for kids, onigiri or sushi, potatoes, recipe | 37 Comments »

Baba ghanouj lunches

Contents: Grilled minted leg of lamb (Alton Brown’s “Silence of the Leg O’ Lamb” recipe), homemade baba ghanouj (grilled eggplant dip) with Aleppo pepper, grilled radicchio with chocolate/vinegar/raisin/pine nut sauce (recipe from How to Grill), quick salad of halved cherry tomatoes and cucumber with vinaigrette and mustard, and pita bread.

Morning prep time: 8 minutes, using leftovers from last night’s dinner. I made the quick salad fresh in the morning with vinaigrette already made and in the refrigerator — a quick way to add flavor to any number of dishes, not just salads.

Packing: The cut tomatoes in the salad gave off liquid, so if I weren’t using a totally divided box like the one above it would be better to pack it in a separate little container. I cut the big slices of lamb into bite-size pieces for easy eating (using a knife in the lunch containers is both unwieldy and scars the boxes).

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Published by Biggie on May 9th, 2007 tagged bento, for kids, lactose free, meat, recipe, vegetarian | 15 Comments »

Thai curry lunch and recipe

Contents: The side dish containers in the insulated bento set contain blood orange, cucumber, cherry tomatoes, and plantains with crema (sour cream) from a Salvadorean restaurant in San Francisco (Balompie). The red Thai curry is homemade with chicken, fresh corn, broccoli and yellow bell peppers; recipe follows. Thai curry is a standard throw-together dinner in our house; with the help of a few Thai pantry staples, I can get it on the table in less than 30 minutes using whatever protein and vegetables I have on hand.

Morning prep time: 6 minutes, using mostly leftovers. The fruit needed slicing, and the cold rice and curry needed heating in the microwave.

Packing: I used the “rice lid” packing technique described in this post to pack both rice and curry in the same thermal food jar without soaking the rice through (totally covering the curry with rice after taking the photo). Be careful not to overfill the food jar, though, otherwise you’ll force the rice down into the curry and defeat the purpose of the rice lid. You can get the same effect as the pricier insulated bento set by using a small side container and a thermal food jar, commonly available from stores like Target or Walmart.

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Published by Biggie on May 8th, 2007 tagged bento, curry, food jar, for kids, glutenfree, poultry, recipe, rice, sandwich or wrap | 7 Comments »

Food safety for packed lunches (updated)

(This post was written for today’s The Daily Tiffin, where it ran in their Tiffin Tuesday column. It’s a refresh of my original post on food safety for packed lunches.)

May is Safety and Care month on The Daily Tiffin, so I wanted to share some pointers on keeping our packed lunches safe from spoiling. In my reading, the most interesting thing I found was modern research on foods with naturally antibacterial properties, which starts to explain traditional wisdom about food spoilage around the world. There are four main methods to keep your packed lunch safe:

Incorporate food and products with antibacterial properties
Keep it clean: Don’t introduce bacteria into the lunch when packing
Keep hot foods hot and cold foods cold, using thermal jars and cold packs
Pack less perishable foods, especially in the summer
- Extra precautions for hot weather
- Handy foods for hot weather
- Ways to make dishes less perishable

The following are only guidelines for food safety; please make your own decisions about what you’re comfortable packing and eating (I am not a food safety authority).

1. Incorporate food and products with antibacterial properties

Foods

Japanese bento cookbooks traditionally suggest packing foods with antibacterial properties in lunches in order to keep food from spoiling. Suggested foods include umeboshi (pickled plum), wasabi, ginger, karashi, salt, shiso, parsley and vinegar (i.e. making sushi rice, or putting an umeboshi or a tablespoon or two of rice vinegar in the cooking water when making rice). Some recommend wiping the inside of the bento box with a slice of ginger before packing. This is all fine and good for Japanese food, but that’s not what I usually eat for lunch.New USDA- and NSF-funded research on foods with antibacterial properties has yielded a number of foods that fit nicely in the world food lunchbox. The strongest antibacterial foods (killing all bacteria) are evidently garlic, onion, allspice and oregano. The second strongest (killing up to 80% of bacteria) include thyme, cinnamon, tarragon, cumin (and lemongrass). The third strongest (killing up to 75% of bacteria) are capsicums, including chilies and hot peppers. The fourth strongest (killing 25% of bacteria) include white and black pepper, ginger, anise seed, celery seed, and lemon or lime juice. Honey has antibacterial properties, and the dodecenal compound in cilantro/coriander (both fresh leaves and seeds) is evidently one of the stronger antibacterials as well. (see sources 1 - 3 below)

Products
There are a number of bento products in Japan that have been treated with an antibacterial coating (i.e. flavorless compounds extracted from wasabi, etc.), designed to stave off microbial growth in packed lunches. These include aluminum food cups for cooking, plastic sheets that you place on the surface of your packed food, and food dividers that look like sushi grass. These must be touching the surface of the food to be effective. Not all food dividers and food cups are antibacterial; they must be marked “antibacterial”. I bought the products below at local dollar stores and markets in San Francisco; click the photos for larger views with the “antibacterial” character indicated.

Antibacterial food dividers and bento sheets:

Antibacterial cups:

2. Keep it Clean: Don’t introduce bacteria into the lunch when packing

Make sure your hands, food prep area, utensils and lunch containers are clean. When possible, use utensils (chopsticks, spoon, tongs, plastic wrap) to place, mold and arrange unwrapped food in your lunch container. If you’re using a bento box with a rubber packing strip around the lid, be sure to periodically remove, wash and thoroughly dry the packing seal (and the groove in the lid). This will keep your box clean and ensure that the packing strip does not crack, which would leave you without a watertight seal.

3. Avoid the temperature danger zone with perishable foods

The danger zone for bacteria growth is between 40 to 140º F (4 to 60º C, or room temperature). An extremely effective way to keep food safe until you eat it is to minimize the time food spends in this temperature zone (ideally less than three hours). The USDA’s food safety page has a number of useful guidelines.

Keep hot foods hot by using a pre-heated insulated thermos or food jar for liquids like curries, soups, stews, etc. To pre-heat, fill the thermos with hot water, let it stand for a minute or two, empty the thermos, and fill with hot food (close it quickly!). You can get little kid-sized 300ml thermal food jars at superstores like Target or Walmart, bigger food jars, or even large thermal lunch jars with multiple containers inside (like the Mr. Bento or Ms. Bento) from online stores Amazon.com.

Keep cold perishable foods cold by storing your lunch in a refrigerator (if available) or using insulated lunch bags or containers with cold gel packs. Western versions include insulated lunchboxes, the Laptop Lunchbox, Fit N Fresh containers; Japanese versions include insulated bento bags and picnic sets, bento boxes with a gel pack integrated into the lid, and insulated bento kits (with a thermal jar for the lid, two lidded side containers and an insulated carrying bag that you can put a gel pack into to carry hot and cold items at the same time). Thermal lunch jars can also be pre-chilled with ice water and used to pack chilled lunches. Flexible ice blankets are essentially a quilt of small reusable ice packs. They can be cut apart to produce many small ice packs, perfect for throwing into an insulated lunch bag (ice blankets are widely available at sporting stores, wholesale food stores and drugstores). Click on the photos below for a larger view.

Reusable ice blanket for packed lunches

4. Pack less perishable foods, especially in the summer. Rice becomes hard and unappetizing when refrigerated at low temperatures, so many Japanese forego refrigeration and cold packs for their rice-based bentos, choosing instead to incorporate antibacterial foods, pack foods that are less likely to spoil, and make their food less perishable through traditional cooking/packing methods.

A. Extra precautions for hot weather (for lunches to be eaten at room temperature)

Japanese bento cookbooks instruct you to make sure all food in a packed lunch has been thoroughly heated through to the middle, so in hot weather scramble eggs until they are dry. Avoid raw or rare meat, poultry, fish or eggs. Avoid raw fillings for rice balls (make sure tarako fish eggs are grilled). Heat (then cool) even processed meats like sausages or hot dogs before packing to kill any bacteria that may have been introduced after processing.
Avoid dairy products such as yogurt (especially when spooned out of a larger container).
Avoid moist, liquidy foods.
Avoid packing regular tofu in the same container as other foods as it sheds water and spoils easily.
Avoid raw vegetables except cherry tomatoes.
Avoid cut fruit as it spoils easily; pack whole fruit like a banana instead.
Exercise caution with cooked rice, potatoes, grains and legumes (spice heavily, mix with antibacterial foods, dry thoroughly).

B. Handy foods that survive summer heat

Cherry tomatoes
Rice that has been mixed with pickled vegetables, chopped pickled plum (umeboshi), or other foods with antibacterial properties
Whole fruit
Canned fruit that has been frozen in single-serving freezer containers (pack frozen to act as a cool pack)
One-bite jellies that have been frozen (pack frozen to act as a cool pack)
Juice boxes or bottled water that have been frozen (pack frozen to act as a cool pack)

C. How to make dishes less perishable

With moist, liquidy foods, first dry before packing (drain in a small colander or on paper towels) and pack in a paper food cup to contain any excess moisture.
Spice foods more heavily than usual.
If you’re cooking or heating foods right before packing them in a sealed container (such as a bento box) to be eaten at room temperature, be sure to cool them first before packing. Once you’ve packed the lunch, allow it to cool further with its lid off to avoid condensation on the inside of the container. This also makes the box easier to open at lunchtime (an important point for preschoolers!)

Sources:
1) 1998 Cornell study on antibacterial spices: http://www.news.cornell.edu/Chronicle/98/3.5.98/spices.html
2) Cilantro article: http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2004-05/acs-is052404.php
3) CookWise, Shirley O. Corriher, 1997.
4) The New Professional Chef, Culinary Institute of America
5) USDA lunch food safety guidelines: http://www.cfsan.fda.gov/~dms/ftteats.html#lunch
6) USDA Freezing/Refrigerating time chart: http://www.cfsan.fda.gov/~dms/fttstore.html
7) Aijo Tappuri! Obento, Shufu no Tomo, 2007.
Obento Daijiten, Index Magazine, 2005.

Lunch in a Box is nominated for Best Food Blog in the Blogger’s Choice Awards. If you’d like to cast your vote for speedy lunch packing, click here (you can vote for multiple blogs in the same category).

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Published by Biggie on May 8th, 2007 tagged equipment, parenthacks, tips | 45 Comments »

Speed technique: Freezing ginger

I like to keep a knob of ginger on hand, but I often don’t use it all up before it starts to shrivel up and lose its potency. Last week a friend gave me a whole bag of ginger and I knew there was no way I could use it in time, so I consulted the Japanese books on freezing and found that ginger can be frozen both sliced and grated. An ingenious way to store grated ginger is to form it into a long, skinny cylinder in plastic wrap, and freeze it. When you’re ready to use some, just break or cut off as much as you need and return the rest to the freezer! Convenient for adding quick flavor to a dish that you’re cooking for a speedy lunch or dinner.

I have a couple of special ginger graters, but a Microplane rasp-type grater also does an okay job. Ceramic ginger graters (like this and this) and metal ones below do produce a nicer, silkier product without the fibrous strings, and collect the juice in a little reservoir in the grater. Worthwhile if you grate a lot of ginger, otherwise don’t sweat it.

You can also freeze pre-sliced (or julienned) ginger. Just peel and slice, wrap tightly in plastic wrap, and freeze in another container (freezer bag or plastic container like tiny Tupperware) to prevent freezer burn.