nakji

Well, my first bento got out the door this week, despite almost having been forgotten by my husband. I'm off today, so I only had to prep one. I did all the veg cutting the night before, to speed things up. I did a "gyu-don" style one, made with pork and a 1:1:1 ratio of water, soy and mirin. I tried Hiroyuki's gyu-don recipe from recipegullet, but my husband pronounced the broth "fishy", so I kept it to the side for myself, and proceeded with the different sauce. On the side were steamed broccoli and carrot. I included a bottle of gochujang thinned with vinegar to spice things up. I put a pear in for dessert, and I hope everything gets to work and gets eaten. This is an 800 ml box, so it's pretty big! I was able to put a little of the pork aside for my bento tomorrow, too, so I've got one item ready to go, as per Helenjp's advice. I'll be putting aside some things from tonight's dinner, which should form the rest of my bento tomorrow. H won't need one, as Tuesday is "Mosburger Day" at his work.

I love Indian-style eggs for breakfast! The first meal I had in India was an omelette made with cherry tomatoes, red onion, and cilantro, with masala spice. It made me so happy! Just thinking about it brings me right back to Delhi and being jet-lagged and culture-shocked. I think this is my first post in the breakfast thread, so here goes... Just an English muffin with eggs and melted pepper-jack cheese. I wish I had read John Hammond's recipe first, though, it would have been even better!

Vanilla chicken? Is the vanilla in a sauce? How does it work? I tried a version of the 40 cloves of garlic chicken recipe that was in this week's NYT Dining section - but I got bored peeling cloves, and decided to add some garlic scapes instead. Very "Iron Chef", I thought, featuring two aspects of the garlic plant. I also managed to find a bottle of Marsala, so I glugged that in instead of the white wine called for in the recipe. I'll be trying to use that bottle up before I have to move again in 6 weeks, so if anyone knows any (non-oven) recipes that call for marsala, please let me know. We had it with a nice loaf of sourdough bread from a bakery in Ikebukuro and a bottle of chilean sauvignon blanc. Dessert was apricot pastries from the same bakery: That onion soup looks amazing...do you think I could substitute marsala for the vermouth called for in the recipe?

I think I have one of these cameras - the FE-230?...it has a "cuisine" setting. I don't find it much different from using the regular macro setting, but I'm completely clueless about photography anyway. The problem with my food photography is that I usually take pictures at night, which requires a flash. When combined with a macro setting, it often casts a shadow over the bottom of the photo. Like jsmith says, I have a hard time getting shots in focus. If you want to see the photos taken with this camera, check out my pictures in the "Dinner...what did we cook?" thread.

I felt like something different for dinner, so I wandered around my supermarket for a while looking for inspiration. I found a nice looking steak, and I knew I had a slightly stale baguette at home, left over from a food-buying orgy at Tokyu Foodshow, so I decided on pan-fried steak with panzanella. Not pictured is the cheap red wine we had - Penfold's Rawson's Retreat Shiraz Cabernet, in case anyone's interested - at 800 yen, I thought it was a bargain. This was my first time pan-frying steak, and I doubt I was able to get the pan hot enough to please the people over on the charred steak thread, but it was perfectly cooked to my taste. I didn't have any balsamic vinegar for the salad, so I used the rice vinegar I already had at home. Dessert was cheesecake - okay, it was store-bought, but I put the strawberry jam on - does that count?

I did this three years running when I lived in South Korea. The last year, I had twenty people to cook for, in a small apartment. I had one (smallish) oven, and four gas burners. It helped that the guests were all expatriates far from home who had fairly low expectations for the quality of the meal - the point for us was to have a meal (any meal) in the company of each other. I'm sure your guests feel the same, so just remember that when the gravy's not thickening properly and the potatoes are boiling over! That being said, I managed to roast two turkeys (one the night before, one the morning of), in addition to side dishes. My trick was to be brutal with the menu planning, and have a plan for when everything had to be cooked. It helps to look at your menu and decide whether things really must be baked if they could be boiled or microwaved, and vice versa. I did most of my veg prep the day before, and then put them into pans in the fridge. Sweet potatoes, mashed potato, and stuffing were done the day before and put in foil tins to warm in the oven once everyone had arrived. Carrots and green beans were done on the stove top. Most things were served fairly lukewarm. I found most people didn't care, as long as there was ample hot gravy to be poured over everything. Lots of gravy is really important, and will hide most of your goofs. People will forgive anything if there's good gravy. No soups, fancy garnishes or other bits, and the foil pans were wrapped up to go home as leftovers with grateful guests. One thing I did learn was that radish kimchi makes an excellent Thanksgiving side dish.

Yes, I was thinking about that. He really likes sandwiches, so I thought of putting in the meat and the cheese and bread individually, with little pots of mustard and some chopped raw veggies on the side. He also really likes meatballs, so maybe the makings of a meatball sandwich. He's not a big fan of mayo, though, so most salad sandwiches are out, but coleslaw might make a good side. What he really likes are stews, chilis, and homemade soups, so I may have to reassess the budget and look at getting him a thermos set. He really likes fried chicken, and it's his dependence on local fast food chains (cough KFC cough) is what's got me looking at bentos for him. He never gains an ounce, damn him, but I do worry about all that salt.

Is Bo Luc Lac considered dumbed down Vietnamese food? I've only ever had it in Vietnam...in Vietnamese restaurants...surrounded by Vietnamese people who were also eating Bo Luc Lac. Granted, I did all my serious eating in the North...

Oh, that looks good, Ted Fairhead. Was that made in a skillet? I'm always on the lookout for recipes that don't require an oven.

Helenjp, this had me laughing until I cried. I read your post with enthusiasm, as I'm going to start preparing bentos for myself and my husband in earnest next week. I'm facing some obstacles, though. My microwave and range can't be operated at the same time, as it causes an overload on the power and plummets my apartment-pod into darkness. I don't make fresh rice in the morning, since we don't have a rice cooker, and I draw the line at getting up more than 30 minutes early to make lunch. Right now, I'm zapping leftover rice from the night before, while relying on cold veg (not reheated, from the fridge) and cold boiled eggs or tamagoyaki made the night before and kept in the fridge as sides. So prep is basically: nuke rice, leave on table to cool while I make breakfast and shower, and then before I bolt out the door, I plop in the sides from the fridge. Should I be worried about food safety with this method? Any tips on being more efficient? The other problem is that my husband, while enjoying Japanese food, considers neither rice nor leftovers from the previous night a satisfactory lunch. The leftovers are no problem - there's usually only enough for one anyway, and I can put those in my lunch. So I'll be making western-style bentos - sandwiches, and the like. Does anyone have any ideas? We don't have any thermoses, and they're not in the budget until after Christmas, nor do we have any facilities for heating up lunch. I was thinking cold chopped veggies, cheese and crackers, ploughman's lunch....? Biggie, I've been following your blog for a couple of months now, and your ideas and photos inspired me to make the leap into my own bento-ing.

Thanks for the warning! I usually pack a small cold pack in my lunch bag, but I have to be careful with food safety, since my lunch travels with me on the train for an hour in the morning, and sits in my class until I eat it at about 1 pm. I've read Helenjp's tips, and I'm adding a little vinegar and sake to my rice. But my gut is pretty hardened now, especially after Vietnam. What's atsuyaki tamago? It must be some kind of fried egg? Ce'nedra - they are store-bought gyoza - just pork, green onion and ginger filling. My students laughed when they saw gyoza in my bento. I guess they're not a standard bento filling.

My first day in Korea, my boss took us for bulgogi. There were chilis on the green plate, and Mrs. Lee encouraged me to try one. "Don't worry - they're mild!" Since I was fairly comfortable with spicy food in general, I took a big ol' bite out of one. There was not enough cider in that shop to take away the burn. I felt I had let down all foreigners in Korea by wimping out on a "mild" chili. Then Mrs. Lee tried one herself and had a similar reaction. I felt much relieved.

I used to get goat's milk yogurt at the shop beneath my school. It was really rich and delicious, and it was a creamy yellow colour. It had a skin on top that added to the flavour. A lot of cafes made yogurt cafe, where they mixed yogurt and coffee....oh, I'm missing Hanoi now!

Dr. J, you have an exceptional collection of pretty bowls. I especially like the one with the fish on it. More pictures, please. Also, the food looks good. What kind of rice did you use?

My first photo-worthy o-bento! Although lunches on my campus are criminally cheap (380 yen for a giant curry rice with 2 korroke or tonkatsu on top) I find them too salty for my taste. I made this bento with leftover takikomi-gohan (note the mushrooms have gravitated to the bottom!) and carrots from the night before. They were re-heated in the microwave while I fried some gyoza and made a hard-boiled egg to round out the box. I didn't have enough veg in the house to make it more balanced, but the meal was delicious. I had a mikan for dessert, which I shared with the campus tabbycat on the quad. I think he was more interested in the gyoza, but I didn't share those! I've gone through Torakris's kinpira thread, so I'll add that to the rotation, I think. I've seen the heat-and-eat frozen bento additions in our supermarket, but after a year and a half in Vietnam, I find I'm really sensitive to processed food now, which is funny, considering the enormous quantities of MSG I'm sure I consumed while there. Are there any other standard bento additions? I've also made tamago-yaki with some success, but onigiri are difficult for me, as I don't make fresh rice in the morning (no rice cooker yet!). The box is just a plastic container I got at the 100 yen store, not a real bento.

Oh yeah, that was totally margarine. My favourite butter is 'Snow Brand Fermented Butter" - it's one of the few in my super market that is visibly salted. The rest seem to be unsalted, so I'd guess that most people here prefer a mild butter.

The meatballs are made with ground chicken, and maybe some seasonings like green onion and ginger. I pick them up in the meat department. The sauce is a 1:1 mix of mirin and soy, reduced a little. As for the mirin, I thought about that, like, 10 minutes after posting. But I'd have to get my hands on good mirin. Do you think it would go well with olive oil and butter?

I went to a matsuri in Hon Kawagoe, outside of Tokyo, last weekend, and in between snapping pictures of the incredible shrines making the procession around the historic streets, we managed to get some pictures of all the yummy food on offer. I would have eaten even more, but for a delicate stomach resulting from overindulgence in some really fine Japanese wheat beer the night before. Takoyaki, with extra tentacles: Okonomiyaki: Is it Osaka or Hiroshima style? Formed "steak" with cornbread. Not all that great, actually. Karaage - this did more for my hangover than anything else all day. So light! So gingery! Succulent! Butter Potatoes - Please, sir - I don't think you gave me enough butter. Can I have some more? And finally, for dessert.... Mmmm, bananas....what hangover?

Pasta! Venison Pie! Refrigerator soup! Oh My! I've let my posting lapse while trying to figure out the macro on my husband's new camera. My camera is one plug adapter short of being fully charged, so I finally gave up and went back to my husband's old camera. Now I have to pause and wonder why my house has three cameras but nothing to bake in. There is no decent answer to this question. Recent dinners: Thinly sliced pork, rubbed inside with grainy mustard and wrapped around asparagus. Pan-fried and served over garlic mashed potato. Chicken "marsala" - actually, "Chicken Cheap Red Wine". Anyone know where to buy real Marsala in Tokyo? This is one of the few dishes my husband can actually cook. Served with a loaf of fresh bread and a salad of baby beet greens with sesame dressing. My husband cooked it as a gesture of goodwill, after I spent the day tromping around at the motor show, holding his swag bag while he took photos of motorcycles and models. Tonight, chicken meatballs with teriyaki sauce, as per Hiroyuki's ratio, with mushroom rice - I can't remember if they were matsutake or maitakes. They started with an "m", anyway. And eternal carrots. They're cheap.

What great pictures, Dodie! I've been to Ichon several times, once with my mother. We had an amazing baek ban meal there with Ichon ssal. My boss drove us, and we couldn't stop for lunch until she had stopped at least three other cars and canvassed locals on the best place to take foreigners to eat true Ichon ssal. I sneaked away during the meal and paid the bill before she could get it. What a great memory!

That photo is beautiful, Pille. I wish my husband liked eggplant, I'd make this for dinner! All of the pictures of apple pie are killing me!

The event in question took place early in the nineties, pre-internet availability. Not having any convenient Americans about to question, I proceeded sans common sense. What can I say? I was young then.

When I read a recipe that calls for a "stick" of butter, I immediately throw the book across the room. Excuse me, but WTF is a stick of butter*? My butter comes in pounds, thankyouverymuch. The first time I read a recipe calling for stick, I blithely put a whole pound of butter in, thinking that, while it certainly looked like a stumpy sort of stick, what else could they be referring to? You can imagine how the recipe turned out. And how pissed off I was to waste a whole pound of real butter. *yes, yes, I know I can google it.

Oh. My. Goodness. Those look delicious. The ratio of icing to roll is perfect.

I love soup. I wish I had an immersion blender so I could make more of it. I was worried coming home tonight because it's night-before-payday, and all I had in the fridge was a chicken breast and some random scraps of vegetables and things. But I got inspired when my husband revealed he dipped into our reserve for a Thursday night pick-me-up bottle of riesling. So I rose to the challenge, and filleted the chicken breast into three pieces, stuffed them with garlic scapes and grainy mustard, and wrapped them with bacon. I pan seared them, and finished in the pan with the cover on. A little cream would have been nice for a pan sauce, and some toothpicks to hold them together, but I didn't have any. Still tasted great, though.