Archive for the 'recipe' Category

(Chronologically Listed)

Ma po tofu and Sloppy Joe lunches

Not all dishes fare well cool or at room temperature. Just imagine Sloppy Joe filling eaten cold — congealed and nasty. Because there are no microwave ovens at my son’s preschool or at the park, I like to have a thermal food jar or thermal lunch jar on hand to expand lunch options to include warm food.

Amazon carries thermal bento sets with a thermal food jar and an insulated carrying case for packing cool side dishes. You can achieve the same the effect on the cheap by using a regular thermal food jar that you can find at stores like Target or Walmart, plus a small side dish container for the room temperature or cool foods. (Read more about hot vs. cold lunch packing considerations.) When I use this set for my own lunches, I also like to pack fresh rice in the thermal lunch jar, keeping it warm and soft until I’m ready to eat. (Note to San Francisco locals: Kamei has the two Zojirushi-brand sets behind the counter for $33. Store info at the SF local shopping guide.)

Later this week I’ll be traveling out to Philadelphia to visit my ailing grandmother, so I won’t be as responsive as usual on the comment front. I’ll still be updating the blog from the road, but just a quick heads up. It’ll be interesting to see how my husband fares packing our three-year-old’s lunches on his own for two days; I promised to help by planning out simple menus that require only quick assembly. Maybe he should read my Mommy’s Lunch Manifesto — Need for Speed… I hear that works for dads too.

Contents of preschooler bento lunch: Homemade ma po tofu (with tofu, ground pork, enoki mushrooms and salted black beans), rice, edamame and apple bunnies made with miniature Red Delicious apples that Bug and I found at Safeway (see the apple rabbit tutorial). I thought apple bunnies were out of the picture because Bug doesn’t like apple skin anymore, but something about these tiny apples made him ask for apple bunnies.

Morning prep time: 10 minutes, using leftover mapo tofu. In the morning I made the apple rabbits first and got them soaking in acidulated ice water to curl the ears and prevent the fruit from browning, then moved on to warming the frozen rice and ma po tofu in the microwave and pre-warming the thermal food jar with hot tap water while the apples soaked. (Read on for packing details, Sloppy Joe lunch and recipe, and review of Bush’s Grillin’ Beans.)

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Published by Biggie on May 11th, 2008 tagged beans, bento, food jar, for kids, glutenfree, lactose free, meat, recipe, rice | 19 Comments »

Microwaved thin egg sheets (usuyaki tamago)

Japanese recipes sometimes call for thin sheets of egg omelette (usuyaki tamago) as a garnish (think hiyashi chuka cold noodles, chirashi zushi scattered sushi, or little shapes cut out of the egg with cutters), or as a decorative wrapper for fried rice or little rice ball purses. Think of them as a low-carb alternative to flour-based wraps or nori, for those who don’t like the flavor of seaweed. I’ve made these egg sheets in frying pans before, but it takes practice and technique to turn out an attractive result. Unless I’m using a slick, perfectly non-stick pan just for eggs, my efforts are doomed to failure and I’m left looking at an ugly pile of egg scraps. Very frustrating. When I was browsing speed bento cookbooks in a Japanese-language bookstore recently, though, my friend Mami-chan volunteered that she whips up thin egg sheets on a plate in the microwave all the time for her son’s bento lunches. I was intrigued. Was there an easier, faster way to make thin egg sheets using the microwave oven?

I did some research into Japanese-language recipes and techniques, and found that there are some tricks to producing a good microwave version of this classic. Plate selection is crucial, and seasoning is key to making something tastier than just thin scrambled eggs. (Read on for the full recipe, tutorial, freezing instructions, and a review of microwave-safe plastic wraps.)

TIP: You can make these in advance and freeze them for a speedy shortcut on time-pressed mornings (freezing directions follow the recipe).

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Published by Biggie on March 19th, 2008 tagged eggs, freezing, glutenfree, lactose free, recipe, tips, tutorial or how to | 46 Comments »

Sausage sunflower tutorial & lunch

Today we have more hot dog tricks, with little “sunflowers” made out of halved sausages and quail eggs (a step-by-step tutorial follows). I figured as long as I had all kinds of sausages and hot dogs leftover from my octodog tutorial, I might as well explore other things to do with them besides putting them in curry, kimchi fried rice or making little rabbits. You could also make these with vegetarian tofu dogs, chicken- or turkey-based sausages or hot dogs. I don’t know that these’ll make it into my daily repertoire (um, lazy, remember?), but my three-year-old did get a kick out of them. If you’re into food art, you could take this a step beyond and use other food to sculpt the whole flower and scenery, but this is about my limit. (See my new page on Decorative Food.)

Contents of preschooler lunch: Cornbread mini muffins, crab apple, hot dog sunflowers with fried quail egg (tutorial below), blueberries, cucumber slices, and cheese cubes.

Morning prep time: 10 minutes, using frozen mini muffins made with a mix. In the morning I made the hot dog sunflowers and packed the still-frozen muffins to defrost naturally in the bento lunch. (Read on for lunch details and the hot dog sunflower tutorial.)

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Published by Biggie on March 9th, 2008 tagged bento, dumplings or buns, eggs, for kids, meat, recipe, tutorial or how to | 31 Comments »

Kimchi fried rice lunch & recipe

Fried rice is standard “refrigerator velcro” dinner in my house, using up all sorts of leftover meats and vegetables that might otherwise be forgotten and go bad. A number of readers have asked for my recipe for kimchi fried rice, so last week I got out the scale and measuring cups and took notes on what I put into my free-form fried rice. When I make rice, I always make extra to either freeze for bento lunches or refrigerate for fried rice. Feel free to stray from the master recipe below and use whatever you have on hand; this is an easy way to get lots of vegetables into your family (not quite stealthily enough for seriously picky eaters, but deliciously at any rate).

Contents of preschooler lunch: Tangerine, blueberries, cheese cubes and kimchi fried rice with zucchini, carrots, carnitas, and cocktail sausages leftover from testing for my “octodog” (hot dog octopus) tutorial. Recipe for the fried rice follows.

Morning prep time: 5 minutes, using leftover fried rice. In the morning I warmed the rice in the microwave to restore texture, and peeled the tangerine. Very fast. (Read on for lunch details and the fried rice recipe.)

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Published by Biggie on March 5th, 2008 tagged bento, for kids, lactose free, meat, recipe, rice | 26 Comments »

Leftover Remake: Curry gyoza

I often cook in bulk and pack leftovers for lunch, maximizing the payoff for the time I actually spend cooking. But eating the same thing day after day gets tiresome, as anyone who’s eaten turkey for a week after Thanksgiving knows. Japanese bento cookbooks are full of ways to give new life to dinner leftovers, for example using leftover potato salad to make little Scotch eggs or faux latkes with tuna.

One fast dinner option at our house is Japanese curry, made with little blocks of shelf-stable Japanese curry roux (cooking notes here). I’ve previously made curry pasta with frozen unsauced pasta, and stirred leftover curry into macaroni and cheese. This time I decided to try my hand at using the leftover curry to fill gyoza potstickers (jiaozi in Chinese, mandu in Korean). These can be frozen in bulk and cooked up quickly on time-pressed mornings.

The trick to making these is to use premade gyoza wrappers from the market, and to pick out the chunks of meat and vegetables from the curry and mash them up with only enough curry liquid to flavor it. An overly liquid filling yields soggy, flat dumplings. (Read on for step-by-step directions.)

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