Archive for the 'recipe' Category

(Chronologically Listed)

Shortcut tamagoyaki or Japanese rolled egg

Sometimes I’d like to have tamagoyaki (Japanese rolled omelette) at home, but just can’t be bothered to spend the time it takes to make the individual layers. A recent Orange Page magazine story on make-ahead bento lunches showed how to make a speedy shortcut version of tamagoyaki in a round frying pan with no rolling, so I was intrigued. Essentially molded scrambled eggs, I made this the other day when I was making dashimaki tamago for four people using eight eggs. This many eggs would ordinarily mean making two separate rolls the standard way, but that was just too much to deal with on a tight schedule. So I tried out the super-speedy version and was pleased with the result. I wouldn’t serve it to impress guests or anything, but it’s definitely a nice tool in the speedy bento lunch toolbox. I used my standard recipe for dashimaki tamago, but this method is actually easier with tamagoyaki as there’ll be less leakage when the egg rests on the cutting board (recipes and full tutorial for both dashimaki and tamagoyaki here).

Scramble eggs normally over medium heat until heated through but not dry (click on photo for a larger view of the moist curds).

Spread a large piece of plastic wrap out on a cutting board, and turn out the moist egg curds onto the plastic wrap while still hot moldable. Tightly wrap the egg with the plastic wrap, and use your hands to form it into a log shape that’s slightly larger than a regular tamagoyaki roll. Let it sit, tightly wrapped, for 10 minutes so that the egg sets up in the right shape. Unwrap and cut into slices.

You can also use a bamboo sushi mat (’makisu’) to push the egg into shape, as shown here.

Tip: You’ll get best results with this method if you prepare the more solid tamagoyaki as opposed to dashimaki tamago, but dashimaki is also doable. The excess liquid in dashimaki tamago will spill out of the plastic wrap after molding (also during molding if you’re not careful). After you unwrap it, just dry the entire egg log by blotting lightly with paper towels and slice as usual. You can also make a variation by reducing the amount of dashi in the egg mixture, thus reducing the amount of leakage at the end.
READ MORE:

Share this post:

Published by Biggie on September 20th, 2007 tagged eggs, glutenfree, lactose free, recipe, tips, tutorial or how to | 30 Comments »

Meatball and rice “bomb” lunches

Consider this lunch a bomb — a meatball and rice “bomb”. I came across this rice ball variation in a Japanese-language onigiri cookbook, where it was called a “bakudan onigiri”, or “bomb onigiri”. It’s pretty straightforward: with your hands or ball-shaped onigiri mold (photo below), cover a meatball with short- or medium-grain rice, then completely cover that with moistened scraps of nori seaweed. I used seasoned, roasted Korean seaweed because I like the taste, but regular Japanese sushi seaweed is the norm and is sturdier to work with. Variations include flavoring the rice with furikake rice sprinkles, or replacing the meatball with another flavorful filling like a steamed shumai dumpling. Think outside of the box for fillings — do you have highly seasoned, non-moist leftovers that might go well with rice?

Contents of my lunch: Meatball “bomb” onigiri stuffed with teriyaki & pineapple chicken meatballs (Aidells brand) and wrapped with seasoned Korean seaweed. The second tier has chunks of imitation crab with sanbaizu sweet vinegar sauce (recipe here) and frozen chopped cilantro, yellow and red plum tomatoes, grilled eggplant with miso glaze, and sauteed nopales (prickly pear cactus paddles) with homemade salsa Criolla (vinegary fresh salsa).

Morning prep time: 20 minutes, using leftovers (rice, eggplant and salsa Criolla), ready-made food (meatballs) and a flavorful basic sauce I keep in the refrigerator (sanbaizu).

Cooking: I bought the nopales already de-spined and diced, so it was quick work to toss that into a frypan with a little oil and salt to start cooking at the start of meal prep. I added the vinegary salsa Criolla when the nopales got slimy, and cooked until the slime dissipated — then drained and cooled in a mini bowl and strainer before packing. I microwaved the cold rice and meatballs to restore texture, and made the “bomb onigiri” with round onigiri molds (shown at left) dipped in water to assist the release. I picked up this mold at Daiso in Daly City for US$1.50 in the freezer container section; check their store locator for additional locations internationally.

Packing: I cut the long slices of leftover eggplant into bite-size pieces for easy eating, and cut the middle onigiri rice ball in half just for the photo to show what’s inside. These are much more stable when left intact; I don’t recommend cutting them apart before packing. Future versions will be packed and photographed whole. Lunch packed in two 350ml tiers of a Lock & Lock lunch set.

Contents of preschooler lunch: Bug requested that his meatballs be separate from his rice, so he’s got some halved meatballs and shaped onigiri (rice mixed with salmon furikake), plus a cheese triangle with his lunch. Everything went down the hatch except the nopales, which he tried but didn’t like. Oh well, at least he tried it!

Morning packing time: 16 minutes (didn’t have to make the “bomb onigiri”).

Packing: Packed in a 350ml Geki Ranger box, with a rounded-tip octopus pick for the meatballs. Everything but the nopales was finger food. If I were to remake this lunch for solo preschooler eating, I’d remove the pits from the cherries.

READ MORE:

Share this post:

Published by Biggie on August 23rd, 2007 tagged bento, for kids, lactose free, meat, onigiri or sushi, recipe, rice | 24 Comments »

Recipe page up, and T-shirts for sale

1. RECIPE PAGE

I’ve been working on improvements to the website over the past month, and just put up an organized list of all of the recipes that have appeared on Lunch in a Box over the past year. Grouped by main ingredient, I hope this link list will be useful to folks in browsing around. Please feel free to comment even on old posts with any questions as I do keep up via the Recent Comments widget in the sidebar to the right that displays the most recent comments.

2. GET YOUR BENTO T-SHIRTS & GEAR

With design help from reader Corgi, Lunch in a Box now has funny lunch- and bento-themed T-shirts and merchandise available via CafePress, which ships internationally. If you’d like to wear your pasttime on your sleeve, coffee mug, onesie, notebook, greeting card or anywhere else, pop on by the Lunch in a Box store on CafePress. The Original What’s For Lunch blog actually read my mind last week by writing a song parody about Lunch in a Box. If you don’t get the song reference, go to YouTube for the Justin Timberlake/Andy Samberg Saturday Night Live music video spoof “D*ck in a Box”, which is actually nominated for a Grammy Award this year (work warning: uncensored version). We’re working on additional designs, so stay tuned.

3. SITE IMPROVEMENTS

If you’re reading this on the website itself, you may have noticed a few changes over the past week. You can now click icons at the end of each entry to e-mail the post to someone, or to go to a printer-friendly version of the post without photos or comments. This should be helpful for printing out posts like recipes and the San Francisco Bay Area shopping guides.

There are now a number of ways to keep up with Lunch in a Box posts. In addition to subscribing via a feed reader, you can now subscribe via e-mail, delivered daily by FeedBurner whenever there’s a new post. There will be no spam as a result of supplying your e-mail address for the posts — I get cranky about that sort of spamming. Additionally, people who had asked me for graphics to use when linking here can now create and customize a widget via Widgetbox showing the latest Lunch in a Box posts (text and/or photos).

If you keep track of blogs via MyBlogLog, you might want to join the Lunch in a Box community on MyBlogLog. The MyBlogLog widget in the sidebar also lets you see recent Lunch in a Box readers with a MyBlogLog identity — clicking on their photo will take you to their member page where you can surf to their blogs. Interesting stuff! If you have a MyBlogLog identity but do not want your information to be displayed when you visit, you can control this on your MyBlogLog account settings page.

Lastly, the Guestbook is back up after a hiatus necessitated by a conflict with another WordPress plug-in. Unfortunately, the fix wiped out the old entries, so my apologies if your comment is no longer there. Should be fine now!

As always, please feel free to comment with any bugs you’ve noticed on the site, suggestions for improvement, etc. as I continue to work on the site usability. Having just launched this standalone site in June 2007, this is still quite new for me, and your feedback is welcome.

READ MORE:

Share this post:

Published by Biggie on August 21st, 2007 tagged admin, recipe, shopping | 9 Comments »

Homemade gnocchi box lunches

Bug and I made homemade gnocchi for dinner last night, which he really enjoyed as it was like playing with play dough (modeling clay). Involving your kids in meal prep can be a fun way to get them interested in their food, as well as being rewarding family time if you don’t stress about the meal being fast or perfect. Check out the James Beard Award-winning website Spatulatta.com for videos of kids teaching kids to cook; there’s a lot of quality material there, including the Spatulatta Cookbook.

Contents of preschooler lunch: Homemade gnocchi with pesto sauce, Bartlett pears, Concord grapes, pluot (plum apricot hybrid), and kiwi. The grapes turned out to be unpopular with Bug because of their seeds and thicker skin. I love their complex, almost wine-like flavor, though, so Bug fed them to me.

Morning prep time: 7 minutes, using leftover sauced gnocchi. In the morning I just microwaved the sauced gnocchi to restore texture, and cut up fruit. (I boiled uncooked gnocchi for my meal to see how the two differed.)

Packing: Everything is cut into bite-sized pieces for easy child eating. I dipped the cut pears in lemon juice mixed with strawberry banana juice to prevent the fruit from browning without the sour taste of straight lemon. A little pink Shokupanman pick was supposed to help with the pears, but they were so soft that a fork was a better utensil (they fell apart with the little pick). Packed in a cheap three-tier 495ml box from Daiso, closed with the elastic bento band shown here.

Cooking: We made the gnocchi with potatoes and flour — that’s it. Marcella Hazan, the Soup Nazi of Italian cookbook writers, gives good guidance on making gnocchi in her definitive cookbook Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking. Boil 1.5 lbs of boiling potatoes (I used Yukon Golds) with skins on, put them through a potato ricer or mouli while still warm, and work in about 1.5 cups of all-purpose flour until it gets to a soft Play Dough consistency. Flour the work surface and roll into long ropes of one inch in diameter, then cut ropes into 3/4-inch segments. Use the concave tines of a dinner fork to shape the gnocchi (or just poke them with your finger to make an indent that’ll catch the sauce). Cook the gnocchi in small batches in salted boiling water — pull them out 10 seconds after they float to the surface. Gently sauce and eat. Check out the gnocchi recipes and tutorials by Simply Recipes and Cook (Almost) Anything Once.

My lunch: I set aside some shaped but uncooked gnocchi last night to test the difference between leftover cooked/sauced gnocchi and freshly cooked gnocchi in our box lunches. Result: the gnocchi I boiled this morning had a nicer texture but lost a little of their defined shape through the overnight rest in the refrigerator (next time will try freezing them). The refrigerated cooked/sauced gnocchi was fine but not optimal, and needed to be tossed with a little fresh pesto sauce in the morning before packing.

Morning prep time: Because I boiled my gnocchi fresh this morning in a small pot, it took about 15 minutes to make this lunch.

Packing: Packed in two 350ml tiers of a Lock & Lock lunch set, with the drink container holding banana-strawberry juice cut with water.

(Edit: After making this, I discovered that Donna Hay’s blog was having a gnocchi roundup, so I submitted it forÂ HHDD#14, hosted this time by Cafe Lynnylu. You can see the full gnocchi roundup here, posted Aug. 25, 2007.)

READ MORE:

Share this post:

Published by Biggie on August 15th, 2007 tagged bento, dumplings or buns, for kids, lactose free, parenthacks, pasta or noodles, potatoes, recipe, vegetarian | 24 Comments »

Kabocha squash box lunches

My son decided to go on strike against playgroup this morning, so I had more time to think about and prepare lunch before going out for a playdate. Reminds me of a tip I read in a bento cookbook: the night before, think of one item you’ll pack in the next day’s lunch. This’ll help you start to form an image of the lunch so you’re not totally paralyzed when you walk into the kitchen in the morning.

Contents of my lunch: Rice balls wrapped in nori, ham croquettes and Lizano sauce (sources here), honey-simmered kabocha squash, and cucumber and tomatoes tossed in sanbaizu sweet vinegar. Ah, tangy Lizano sauce — is there anything you don’t improve?

Morning prep time: 15 minutes, using frozen food, leftovers and one speedy side dish. A few weeks ago I made rice balls with extra fresh rice and froze them, so it was just a matter of microwaving to warm and restore texture, and wrapping in pre-cut nori. The croquettes were frozen from a box (Goya brand), so I deep-fried them in a tiny pot to conserve oil while speeding up heating and clean-up. While the oil was heating up and the rice balls were in the microwave, I prepped the squash for the microwave and packed the leftover marinated cucumber and tomato.

Packing: I put the fried and cooled croquettes into an oil-absorbent food cup to keep them nice and crispy. I picked up the paper-lined food cups for US$1.50 at Daiso, but you can also just line the container with a bit of paper towel as I did in Bug’s lunch below. My subsequent concern was to keep anything juicy away from the crispy croquettes, which meant that the drained and cooled kabocha would go next to them, then the raw cucumber/tomato salad in another food cup at the farthest end in case juice or dressing leaked. The lunch’s color contrast might have been nicer with the salad in the middle, but I’m not going to go for form over function here. Packed in a 580ml Urara dragonfly box (250ml & 330ml tiers).

Cooking: I adapted a quick recipe for honey-simmered kabocha squash from Toshiko Okuzono’s book “Konban no Okazu & Ashita no Obento” (roughly, Tonight’s Dinner and Tomorrow’s Bento Lunch). Because I didn’t have frozen, pre-cooked kabocha chunks, I started with small chunks of raw kabocha that I cut from half of a very small squash, but you could also substitute other squashes like butternut in its place (butternut will take less time to cook). In a microwave-safe bowl, combine 1/4 cup water, 2Tb of honey and a dash of salt, add the kabocha and stir to coat. Cover and microwave on high for 4 to 5 minutes until soft, stirring halfway through to ensure even cooking. (Cooking time may vary depending on the strength of your microwave.) Let it sit, covered, for an additional 2 minutes to let the steam and residual heat finish cooking the hard squash. Drain and toss with 1Tb of butter if desired.

Contents of preschooler lunch: The same as mine, but with a pre-filled sauce container of tonkatsu sauce (recipe here) for the croquettes instead of Lizano sauce. Wrapping the whimsically shaped rice balls in nori would have covered up the shapes, so instead I rolled them quickly in aonori (seaweed flakes) and sakura denbu (pink, sweetened fish powder — better than it sounds! A kid favorite.).

Packing: I decided to use two containers so that I’d be able to separate the dry items from the moist items, and lined the area under the croquettes with a folded-up paper towel to keep them nice and crispy. Bug ate the croquettes and rice balls with his hands, and the squash and salad with a little fork. Packed in one 350ml tier of an insulated Lock & Lock lunch set and one 180ml tier of a Thomas the Tank Engine 4-tier nesting bento set.

READ MORE:

Share this post: