久しぶりだ!
Authentic Japanese tastes are hard to come by in the U.S., so it’s absolutely necessary to be creative with your bento!
This is my Mediterranean-inspired bento with the contents as follows:
(counter-clockwise from the top)
Bento box is from francfranc.
Well, it’s finals week, and this is pretty much what I do at my desk all day.
Ok, ok. I don’t really just sit around and do nothing. I sit around and read novels, study Japanese, write e-mails, check facebook… uh…tweet random news stories AND…since the cafeteria is closed all week, I think about making the next day’s OBENTO!
☆ ヽ(´ー｀)ノ ☆
I’ve been making bento all week, but Monday’s bento (vegetable goyoza, stir-fried veggies, and taki-komi gohan) and today’s bento (leftover lentils, broccoli, saffron rice, and curried chicken) just… weren’t all that pretty, so I did not photograph them. These were the two exceptionally nice looking bento this week!
Now, for the contents! First, Tuesday’s obento!:
I actually had made the stir-fried veggies on Monday, and these were leftovers. I tried to replicate the same kind of stir-fry that they make in the school cafeteria, but they have a really well-seasoned wok, and my non-stick frying pan just doesn’t compare! I also can’t generate the kind of heat on my electric burners like they have on the gas stove at school.
Also, being from Pittsburgh, I only use Heinz ketchup. None of that Kagome crap. I love that the bottle has “Heinz” written in katakana on the label. I may have to save this bottle for posterity.
☆
Next up is the bento for tomorrow!
I’ve also been trying to make different kinds of ethnic-type foods… Monday’s was kind of Chinese with the goyoza and stir fried veggies, Tuesday’s… I’ll say it was American because it was a mix of everything, and today’s was clearly Indian-influenced with the lentils and curried chicken. Tomorrow’s bento is clearly Japanese, as you can see, with the fish, umeboshi, white rice and furikake. Maybe I’ll make pasta tomorrow night and have an Italian bento for Friday!
I feel like I haven’t made a nice-looking bento in quite some time. Mostly because it’s winter and I’d rather have something hot from the school cafeteria like ramen or my personal favorite, 野菜炒め (stir fried vegetables). The cafeteria was closed today, since the faculty was having the annual “let’s talk about who may not be moving up to the next grade” meeting, and all of the students left after 4th period. Luckily, I was able to anticipate the closure of the cafeteria, and I got down to some intense cooking last night. Hopefully my creative-cooking-juices will still be flowing and I’ll have some energy to make some obento for next week, since we’ll be having final exams and the cafeteria will be closed yet again.
And now, what you’re all probably dying to know… the contents!
The simmered veggies were easy enough to make, modified from a recipe I saw on NHK’s きょうの料理 (today’s cooking). You wouldn’t ever think to add a tablespoon of butter to something that is so…typically Japanese in flavor and ingredients, but it compliments these kind of root vegetables so so so well. Try it!
The rice I used is standard short-grain Japanese rice, well-washed, of course! I actually added a tiny bit of oil (I used grapeseed oil) to make sure the rice didn’t stick. This particular type of rice, made with broth and vegetables mixed in, is more specifically called 炊き込みご飯 (taki-komi-gohan). I feel like it isn’t an everyday kind of food, and that it is usually reserved for special occasions, but hey… when ISN’T a bento a special occasion?! ヽ(^。^)ノ
Did you know that niku-jaga (lit. meat & potatoes) is the Japanese take on beef stew?? A long long time ago, when foreign traders first came to Japan, Japanese people saw that they were eating beef stew, and they tried to imitate it using what was immediately available. It soon morphed into what we all know and love today as niku-jaga. I think everyone makes their niku-jaga a bit differently, much like how everyone makes their own particular style of curry, but here’s how I learned to make this classic pseudo-Japanese item.
You will need:
Directions:
*NOTE* I am going to reiterate that I am pretty bad at gauging the measurements for what I cook. I usually just add things to a pan or pot and it just magically turns out to be something worth eating 80-90% of the time! So, when my friend Ko-chan taught me how to make niku-jaga he explained that it was all about this 7-1-1 ratio. The 7-1-1 could be basically anything, cups, half-cups, ladles, etc. Since I have a miniscule kitchen and even tinier cookware, we decided to go with using the ladle to make the measurements. Please adjust the amount of onion, carrot, potato, and pork as necessary in accordance with however large you choose to make the measurements in your 7-1-1 ratio.
First! Halve or dice your potatoes, depending on how big or small they are. Cut your carrots into large chunks. Dice your onion as well.
Then! measure 7 whatever-fulls of dashi into your cooking receptacle! I used a pot! After this, add your 1 whatever-full of soy sauce, then 1 whatever-full of mirin! Simmer this liquid. Add the 1 tablespoon of sugar and dissolve. Then, put all of your vegetables into the liquid and bring to a boil. If you want to add sake to your liquid to give it a bit of a drier sweetness, this is the time to add it. Once the liquid has begun to simmer, make sure to taste it to see if any one flavor is overpowering another! You may find that your mixture is too soy sauce-ey or could use a little more mirin or sugar. Perhaps the entire flavor is too strong, and you need to add more dashi. Who knows. Adjust as necessary!
In a separate pan, brown your pork with a little bit of oil. It doesn’t have to be totally cooked to death, since it is eventually going into the boiling pot of veggies.
Once your vegetables have come to a boil, reduce to a simmer and add the pork. At this stage, you are going to want to cover the pot with either a lid or tinfoil. I don’t know why, but for some reason, the tinfoil skims all of the pork grime off of the top of the liquid, whereas a regular lid will not. Either way, you will end up with delicious niku-jaga. Simmer this until the potatoes and the carrots are soft enough to be pierced with a fork. If you’d like to add konnyaku noodles (as pictured) or peas (mostly for a color contrast) this is when to add them.
★ ★ ★
I know of some people who cook this stuff to death so that the liquid becomes entirely evaporated, but that isn’t really my style.. I like to have a little bit of the liquid remaining to keep everything in the bowl nice and happy and warm. I don’t usually drink it though, since there is a lot of salt in the soy sauce and (if I use the instant kind) dashi.
Let me know if you have your own take on niku-jaga. I’d be interested in knowing how you make it.
If you try this recipe, don’t' forget the 7-1-1 ratio!!!
serve steaming hot and enjoy!!!
★ ★ ★
P.S.: Leftover niku-jaga makes for a very nice bento! I put some spinach dressed with sesame along with it, and some rice, of course.
The colors aren’t as nice as I’d hoped, I have such crappy lighting in my apartment >.<; but here’s pretty obento #3! I took this bento for school this past Friday. I really like my star cupcake wrappers. They are made out of silicone, so you can use them over and over and over, AND they totally make my bento 500 times more adorable than usual.
Now for the contents!
mini hamburgers w/ siracha sauce
green beans simmered in soy sauce/broth
Japanese-style pumpkin
steamed broccoli
rice!
Ok. well. Maybe it wasn’t especially pretty, but it was especially tasty.
The contents!
carrots & broccoli steamed with butter & honey (yes!)
tuna that was pan.. fried? maybe? I dunno... with a little bit of soy sauce
white rice made with dashi and a little sprinkle of dried parsley
I also took a mandarin orange, but it didn’t make it for the photo shoot.
Sometimes I like to make a bento to take to school. I made this kind of bento a while ago, but I forgot to take a photo of it. I think it looks really pretty! Well, not just the food, but I like my bento box, the matching chopsticks and the cloth bag I use to carry it around in. Anyway, I tried my best to replicate the contents once again, and I remembered to take a photo this time!!
Inside!:
steamed broccoli
steamed salmon
Japanese pear slices
rice with mushrooms and sesame seeds
明日。。。いただきま～す！
