A little bento garden

Last week I bought myself a new bento box, and this week I am finally getting to try it out :)

Unfortunately the pictures aren’t too great as I forgot my camera, so I had to take them with my phone, post to Facebook and plonk on here.

The beauty of this bento box (from Muji, in case you are interested) is that it has a large, deep bottom section which you can decorate like a garden J and which will fit more than enough savoury lunch for one person (mine is not full, and this is quite a large bento for me). So, that means you can fill the top with fruit salad!

Today I decided to do a “garden” bento, but I am contemplating concentric circles for tomorrow. Watch this space. 

Anyway, here is the menu:

I made my garden using:

1. White sushi rice
2. 1 spicy Chinese fish ball
3. Tofu rolled in sesame seeds and pan-fried
4. Stir-fried chard and onion
5. In the three little pots:

· Shredded daikon dressed with soy

· Onion and red pepper confit (I got this recipe from Maki’s blog Just Bento)

· Shredded carrot dressed with soy, rice vinegar, chilli and sesame

One of my tricks to keep the oil content down is to use the same pan for everything and cook them consecutively. I made the confit first, as that requires a bit of oil, and when it was about half done I added the tofu so it could benefit from a little of the oil and grab some of the flavour. When both were done, I added another half teaspoon of oil and the chard/onions – the benefit of this is that they got all the leftover toasted sesame from the tofu. 

The fruit salad layer has:

• Blood orange (not very artfully peeled, I admit)
• Nashi pear
• Kiwi fruit

I love fruit salad and think it is a great way to end a meal. And a nice way of treating yourself to “dessert” if you are trying to shed pounds with Weight Watchers (zero points!).