Been a long time yes, but I was simply overwhelmed by my internship. I found the time to make this delicious bento though and surprisingly the highlight was the little pile of pickled radish that was actually just an experiment. With some preparation this bento can be assembled in 15 minutes (I used left over zucchini tempura, the only thing I actually had to cook was the stir-fry and the omelet, I also used frozen rice which I unfroze in the microwave).
Contents:
Japonica rice
Quick-pickled radish
Sliced omelet
Cabbage / spring onion / red pepper stir fry (seasoned with soy sauce only)
Zucchini tempura
Quick-pickled radish:
100g of grated or sliced radish (the red ones make for a pretty color)
4 Tbsp rice vinegar
1 Tbsp salt
While you are making your bento, start out by grating the radish and combining it with the other ingredients in a bowl, stir well so the salt gets everywhere. Cover the bowl with a plate or a lid and put it in the fridge. By the time the rest is done, spread a cheese cloth over your sink or another big bowl and spoon the pickled radish on it. Wrap the cloth together and squeeze the radish through the cloth as hard as you can so all the excess liquid is removed. It’s ready to be used. While packing it, best put it in a seperate container within the box.
Ah yes, sweet student life, whenever you think you have a little time to yourself something comes up and you end up spending your holidays busy with random stuff. Like we have this fabulous internship coming up for April. Normally universities, especially here in France, try to incorporate as many internships as possible in the study program for both bachelor and master degrees. Personally I don’t question the necessity of internships and they are absolutely crucial after several semesters of acquiring theoretical knowledge, which, in all honesty, is mostly useless for your future professional career. Yes, the intentions of universities are indeed honorable, but when reality strikes in, you often find yourself stuck in a small company that tries to replace full-time workers by chain hiring interns. Some of my friends at university have to work under abominable conditions, yet they still can deem themselves lucky to have found some sort of working experience to validate their semester. As a student, especially here in France at a public university, it’s difficult sometimes not to lose your motivation when all the support you get is “make it work” from your professors. But hey, all of this is just to make us a stronger, right? Right!
Anyway, enough ranting, let’s get back to business. This bento was quickly made with left-over gnocchi and a tomato relish (the recipe is from one of Jamie Oliver’s cook books). The sandwich and the snow-pea stir-fry are really nothing special. I really liked the taste of the tomato relish with the gnocchi but one must be very careful with packing the relish. It tends to be rather liquid so a leak-proof container with a compartment that can separate gnocchi from relish is needed. Overall I’m not quite happy with the presentation and I’d really like to get back to making more elaborate bentos but for now I’ve got almost no spare time
Recipe section
Tomato relish
Ingredients
100 ml vinegar (the lightest one you have)
2 Tbsp sugar
1 shallot, sliced
400g cherry tomatoes, chopped
salt, pepper
3 Tbsp olive oil
Preparation
In a small saucepan combine vinegar, sugar and the shallot. Bring to a boil and reduce to half at least. Then add the cherry tomatoes and let them get hot. Remove from heat immediately and season with salt, pepper and olive oil.
Serves 2-3. Can accompany various things like pasta or meat dishes.
Let’s face it: as a student you sometimes open the fridge and there is nada :p Only the jar of marmelade and the egg looking at you like “dude, marmelade omelette sucks so give up right away and order pizza”.
Living on a tight budget does suck, however it’s exactly in those moments that you’ve got to be creative if you don’t want to end up eating crackers. So what did I have left exactly: Flour, 1 egg, melting cheese (gruyère), onion, +some cans and usual pantry stuff. Then the flash of insight hit me, why not make spätzle! Spätzle are self made egg “pasta” that are incredibly popular in Germany, especially in the south (they are also very popular in Austria, Switzerland and Alsace). I grew up eating those and I still love them. It’s often baked with cheese and some even add fried onions. It’s godly stuff really and very easy to make… well that is if you follow Yakumo’s 3 rules to making spätzle:
The traditional way of making spätzle consists of pouring the spätzle batter on a cutting board which you hold over a saucepan with boiling water. You then need to rapidly cut off pieces of the batter with a knife. As you might have guessed already: this requires a lot of training and if you work too slowly half of your spätzle will be mushy. Spätzle batter sticks like hell too (fun, fun). Luckily nowadays technology saves us from all that pain and lets us create perfect spätzle quickly without stick-fest. This technological wonder comes in the form of a piece of metal with a lot of holes: Norpro Stainless Steel Spaetzle Maker :p It’s that easy!
Normal spätzle batter is made of eggs, flour and salt (+ oil maybe). Nothing else. This naturally means that you need to add a large amount of eggs. Whilst I’m convinced that eggs are healthy, I still think they should be consumed in moderation. Beside, I don’t always have 5-10 eggs lying around. You can actually reduce the amount of eggs and substitute with water. Of course the less eggs you put the less the spätzle will taste of egg but in my opinion 1egg-spätzle taste delicious already. I’ll still tell you the original recipe so you can make “authentic” spätzle, should you wish to.
If you fry onions to accompany your spätzle, cut the rings equally big :p Like the tart that I am I cut mine pretty unevenly… needless to say that some rings were slightly burned while others were just nice and crispy and some weren’t cooked at all. I could have guessed so before but hey, I’m here to make mistakes so you don’t make them ^^
You are probably wondering right now why the heck I’m getting so excited about eating some form of pasta :p Well spätzle do not exactly taste like pasta. They have a very distinct flavour that goes so well with their particular texture. That and they are very cheap and quick to make. You can use up the rest of eggs or cheese that you have, you can even add some spinach to the batter to color the spätzle… they make a great main course if you bake them with cheese but they are fantastic as a side dish with meat or with a vegtable gratin as well.
Ingredients
How I made my batter:
250g flour (I used whole wheat but you can use all-purpose too)
1 large egg (you can add more eggs, however you must add proportionally less water then)
1 tsp of salt
1 Tbsp of oil (do not use olive oil, the taste doesn’t really fit here, use sunflower for example)
125 ml of water (+/- some, depending on the flour you use)
For an original spätzle batter, you’d need:
250-270 grams wheat flour
5 large eggs
1 tsp salt
1 Tbsp oil
up to 50 ml water
Other than that:
1 large onion
a little flour
1 Tbsp of butter
salt and pepper to taste
4 Tbsp of melting cheese (I used gruyère)
————-
Preparation:
Bring water to a boil in a large saucepan and salt it.
Cut the onion in equally sized rings.
Mix the ingredients for the batter and whisk them well until you’ve got no lumps left. The batter must have the consistency of a frozen yogurt or a very thick pancake batter that sticks to the mixer and is heavy.
Use the batter with your spätzle device according to manufacturer’s instructions to make the spätzle. Just be careful to work as quickly as possible once the batter is over the hot water. If you take too long, the batter will just cook/harden on the device and you won’t be able to push any spätzle through anymore.
Once the spätzle are in the water they are cooked very quickly, as soon as they swim on the surface of the boiling water they are done and can be drained through a sieve.
Keep the spätzle warm and heat about 4 Tbsp of oil in a casserole. Dust the onion rings with flour and put the them inside the hot pan, do not salt them yet and let them (deep-)fry on medium-high heat until they are golden brown.
Put the onion rings on kitchen paper to dry and remove the frying oil from the casserole. Salt the onions if you like.
Add a little fresh oil and heat the casserole up again. Now add the Spätzle and fry them until they take on a golden brown color. Add the butter and the cheese and let it melt nicely. Season to taste.
Remove the spätzle from the heat, serve them on a plate and garnish with onion rings.
Ok, I promised a thorough explicationon how to prepare, conserve/store and eat Japanese rice best. There are basically two types of Japanese rice. One type is the normal rice used in daily cooking for savory dishes. The second type is called mochigome and is used for sweet rice cakes and mochi, due to its stickiness.
Once you’ve chosen the right type of rice (and I doubt that you’ll have much choice in the store you’ll buy your rice at so I’ll forgo the advice on a certain brand) make sure to store it in tightly secured containers in a cool place.
Now on to the equipment needed for preparing Japanese rice!
If you’ve never given this a thought before, you might consider purchasing a rice cooker. This might seem like something totally fancy and accessory to you but for me it has become indispensable since the very first week I bought it and not only because I like to cook Japanese. What’s great about rice cookers is that they don’t do ONLY rice cooking. When you get a rice cooker you can get a steamer/warmer at the same time meaning that you can prepare any type of rice (even western style), steam vegetables or keep them warm. Potatoes, eggs and carrots… basically anything that accompanies or composes a meal can be dropped into the rice cooker and you’re done. You can prepare whole meals with a rice cooker (watch out for more posts about this soon). Cooking rice (especially Japanese rice) without a rice cooker is fairly complicated and mostly you’ll struggle to get it just right. (before my rice was far from perfect) But with this nice little helper you just drop the rice inside and you can prepare the rest of your meal while the cooker does all the work for you. You can even steam vegetables at the same time which preserves vitamines and is good for the health. Also a rice cooker doesn’t have to be pricey, I’ve found this one on Amazon which resembles the one that I have and you’ll get a rice spatula, a measuring cup and steaming container along with the cooker when you order.
A rice spatula and a measuring cup are also very important utensils. The amount of water you add to the rice in proportion to the rice you want to cook must be measured carefully. Furthermore the rice spatula will help you get the cooked rice out of the rice cooker, without sticking and squeeshing the rice. Rice spatulas can be plastic or wooden. I prefer the plastic ones because they don’t take on any weird odors over time. But it’s all up to you. 2 piece Plastic Rice Spatula
Other than that you’ll need a large bowl or any other container that allows you to wash rice in. Also if you don’t have a rice cooker, a regular pan/casserole/pot will do.
Now comes the real fun, your very first Japanese cooking lesson! No don’t worry, it won’t be me holding it because I’m quite happy to give credits to the wonderful blog that taught me how to properly prepare rice. On I Was Just Really Very Hungry, Maki will show you how to cook rice with or without a rice cooker. It’s a great step by step guide (yes even the washing requires some training) that goes through all details and leaves nothing out, here you go:
Yes the post also describes how to make Sushi rice, but I’ll get to that in another post. For now make sure to follow the instructions precisely. When you are done and when the rice is looking at you all deliciously, you might wonder what else you can do now that you’ve got real Japanese rice. Don’t worry, there is a great deal of things you can do with cooked rice, for example Onigiri (Rice Balls), Sushi, rice omelet, fried rice or rice soup. Mouth watering already? Please be sure to check back soon for more recipes
:p It’s that easy!
