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Tarako spaghetti lunches

Posted By Biggie On October 7, 2007 @ 8:32 am In bento, fish or seafood, for kids, lactose free, pasta or noodles | 21 Comments

Making bento lunches for preschool five days a week is no problem so far, but keeping up with the blogging is! I may have to rethink how many of Bug’s lunches I blog about — not all of them are necessarily photo-worthy, and I’d like to keep quality high and focused on speedy lunch packing. I may write in-depth about three or so a week, and then do a roundup post with the remainder for people just looking for quick visual ideas. The jury’s still out, but it’s something I’m weighing.

[1] Tarako spaghetti lunch

Contents of my lunch: Tarako spaghetti with onions, red bell peppers and [2] kaiware (daikon sprouts). The top tier holds a section of corn on the cob, plum tomatoes, broccoli with red wine vinaigrette, black Mission fig, and grapes. Tarako is salted cod roe, but I often use jarred Greek [3] tarama for this dish instead.

Morning prep time: 7 minutes, using leftover pasta and corn. I pre-packed the pasta when cleaning up from dinner. In the morning I briefly microwaved the pasta to restore texture, garnished with fresh kaiware, steamed the broccoli in my [4] microwave mini steamer (speeding up cooking time by 50%), and arranged food in the the top tier.

Packing: I used tongs to twist the spaghetti into two large loose nests, making the pasta tier a little nicer looking. Nothing in the top tier was particularly wet, so I didn’t use food dividers (edible or otherwise). Packed in a [5] 580ml two-tier Urara Dragonfly box.

[6] Tarako spaghetti lunch for toddler

Cooking: Here’s a [7] tarako spaghetti recipe with good notes. I start by sauteing an onion and bell pepper if I have some on hand for color contrast. In Osaka I often had it with a little Kewpie mayonnaise stirred into it. Other variations omit the cream in favor of sauteing in butter and tossing in mirin/tarako/mayo (that’s what I did here). However you vary it, it’s bound to be good — just get the sauce loose enough to lightly coat the noodles.

Preschooler lunch: Contents are the same as mine. For packing, I used kitchen scissors to cut up the spaghetti into smaller bits (right in the box) that are easier for little hands to manage. Packed in a [8] 270ml one-tier Thomas the Tank Engine box with one hard plastic sub-container removed to fit more pasta, and a [9] 150ml Anpanman side dish container for the fruit. After taking the photo I tucked in a little Anpanman pick for the fruit. Verdict: 5 stars. Bug ate all of this at preschool, nothing left over. Success!

(Cross-posted to [10] The Daily Tiffin parenting and lifestyle blog’s [11] Tiffin Tuesday column.)

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URL to article: http://lunchinabox.net/2007/10/07/tarako-spaghetti-lunches/

URLs in this post:
[1] Image: http://www.flickr.com/photos/lunchinabox/1505781435/
[2] kaiware : http://www.gourmetsleuth.com/equivalents_substitutions.asp?index=K&tid=2116
[3] tarama: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taramosalata
[4] microwave mini steamer: http://lunchinabox.net/2007/02/13/speed-bento-techniques-frozen-spaghetti/
[5] 580ml two-tier Urara Dragonfly box: http://www.flickr.com/photos/lunchinabox/288070272/
[6] Image: http://www.flickr.com/photos/lunchinabox/1506642770/
[7] tarako spaghetti recipe with good notes: http://www.recipezaar.com/135630
[8] 270ml one-tier Thomas the Tank Engine box: http://www.flickr.com/photos/lunchinabox/288070274/in/set-72157594150632817/
[9] 150ml Anpanman side dish container: http://www.flickr.com/photos/lunchinabox/193145711/in/set-72157594150632817/
[10] The Daily Tiffin: http://dailytiffin.blogspot.com/
[11] Tiffin Tuesday column: http://dailytiffin.blogspot.com/2007/08/cassava-and-wild-salmon-lunches.html
[12] Freezing unsauced pasta (how-to): http://lunchinabox.net/2007/07/12/freezing-unsauced-pasta/
[13] Using frozen pasta to make quick pasta salad lunches: http://lunchinabox.net/2007/08/04/pasta-salad-box-lunches/
[14] Leftover Remake: Curry pasta lunches: http://lunchinabox.net/2007/07/13/leftover-remake-curry-pasta-lunches/
[15] Speed Technique Overview: A mommy’s lunch manifesto: http://lunchinabox.net/2007/04/23/need-for-speed-a-mommys-lunch-manifesto/
[16] How to pack a bento lunch and use “gap fillers”: http://lunchinabox.net/2007/06/11/guide-to-bento-packing-and-gap-fillers/
[17] Biggie’s list of top speed tips, tutorials and equipment reviews: http://lunchinabox.net/top-tips/
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