La petite biscotte Now in Munich…

Bento n°3!

Contents:

• 1 cup cooked Japanese rice (with a little salt)
• Teriyaki fried chicken (1 chicken breast)
• Cherry tomatoes
• Cucumber, avocado, surimi salad with “sushi” dressing (scroll down for recipe)
• Tamagoyaki
• Maple syrup candy (which my mum in law brought back for us from Canada)
• Chocolate egg

Today I made a bento for us! What I like the most about bento is that it gives you full control over calories, portioning, flavours and assembly. There is nothing more dangerous for the health than running to university/school/work with an empty stomach and then chomping your way through burger/fries/pizza at noon (especially if one does that every day). Unfortunately those unhealthy dishes are about the only thing on the menu of our cafeteria; I’m not complaining though because I know that the limited budget doesn’t allow them to offer anything else.

But that’s precisely why I prepare lunches myself whenever I can. I used to be scared of the preparation time in the morning, but if you plan in advance, making a bento for two people can take as few as 10 minutes (sometimes more sometimes less). I started out by making bento once a month until I got used to the whole process, but then I came to enjoy making and eating bento so much, that I didn’t want to be without it anymore.

When you look at a bento box, the different compartments force you to think of a versatile menu because you never want to put the same thing in two compartments. And once you prepare something different for each compartment you automatically want to make it look neat/appealing. That’s exactly why there is something magic about lifting the lid of a bento box at noon

Utensils:

A Box
It doesn’t have to be an authentic bento box. Anything with a lid, large enough to hold a lunch can serve as container. However be careful, the box must be leak-proof and it must not be made of the kind of plastic that easily absorbs smells. Also if possible, the box should be microwave’able.
Most bento boxes can hold about 400-800ml and that’s about the capacity you should look for. At the beginning people often overestimate the size they need, but 500 ml is more than enough, especially given the fact that the whole space is carefully filled with 4-5 different dishes. Just try it out, you’ll see it stuffs pretty fast
If you want to buy a box nonetheless, please have a look here.
You might find much prettier examples on ebay or other specialized sites. The selection you can get over amazon is very limited.

A fork or chopsticks
What I usually do is: I buy a bag of plastic forks (those you use for parties) and either throw them away after I’m done or I wash and reuse them if they are stable enough. If you are lucky you’ll maybe find a set of fork/knife in a little case (sometimes they offer that for children), that’d be perfect. You can also simply take a normal fork/chopsticks and wrap them in a paper towel.

Rice cooker
This is not obligatory by any means and it strongly depends on what you want to pack in your bento boxes. It is simply very handy if you like Japanese rice. No hassle, you just drop the rice in the rice cooker and you are done. You can even steam a few vegetables at the same time (with the cooker). Sophisticated models even have a timer. Some examples can be found here.

Rectangular Frying Pan
If you’ve always liked those rolled omelets on top of sushi (they are called Tamagoyaki) then the easiest way to make them is with a rectangular frying pan. Try to get a non-stick version if you can, otherwise it can really get quite difficult.

More info
There are two wonderful blogs that specialize in everything around bento. The first is Lunch in a Box and the second one is Just Bento. You’ll find a lot of useful information as well as examples for possible dishes there.

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Ways to save time:

I’ll take this bento as example.

• Rice can be cooked in advance on the weekend. Just fill up your rice cooker with as much rice as it can hold, let it cook and then freeze in 1 cup portions, using plastic freezing bags. In the morning you can simply warm the rice up in the microwave which speeds things up greatly.
• Cut the chicken up in small pieces and marinate it overnight. That way you just need to fry it in the morning which takes about 10 minutes.
• You can cut the vegetables (beside the avocado) the evening before and refrigerate them in an air-tight container.
• If you don’t have sushi vinegar at home (needed for the salad), make it the evening before.
• The only thing you actually have to do in the morning is heat up the rice in the microwave, fry the chicken, make the omelette and cut the avocado to put the salad together. Then of course pack everything in your box and let the rice cool down a little before closing the lid of the box.
• Very important: Do not dress the salad immediately or it will turn soggy, best take a tiny bottle of vinegar with you and pour the dressing over the salad when you actually eat the bento.

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Cucumber, avocado, surimi salad with “sushi” dressing (serves 2)

• 1/3 cucumber
• 1 avocado
• 8 surimi sticks (imitation crab sticks)
• 2 Tbsp sushi vinegar (you can easily get that in supermarkets or asian shops, but if you don’t have any at home, scroll down for a recipe)

Cut the cucumber in quarters and remove the seeds. Cut the cucumber, avocado and surimi sticks in little pieces.
If you don’t have sushi vinegar: Simply mix 2 Tbsp of rice vinegar with 1 tsp salt and 1 Tbsp sugar, put everything into a small pan until the sugar dissolves then let cool down.
Dress the salad with the vinegar as soon as you want to eat it.