Meaty bento #3 - Texan steak

 This week’s lunches are looking pretty carb-free: would you believe it’s simply because I am TOO LAZY to cook rice? But honestly, folks, that is the long and the short of it. I simply haven’t the time or commitment required to cook rice! Appalling, I know. Another factor keeping me away from the rice is the heat: it has been pretty hot here, which makes me crave lots of fruit, protein and veggies and less starch/carbs. 

The most labour-intensive part of the bento was the green bean stew. I get organic food boxes delivered fortnightly and to make sure the vegetables don’t rot before I have time to eat them, I cook them up and freeze them. This recipe took about an hour, but since I was doing it anyway I thought it would make a great addition to my bento.  

And now, a confession: I really have no idea what makes this steak Texan, but I think it is the marinade. I bought it pre-seasoned from Abel & Cole and I'm guessing it has some species of bbq sauce on it. So, if you want to replicate this, I suggest you marinate your steak in bbq sauce. But teriyaki would also be nice.

 The advantage of the steak is that it is thin-sliced, so it took less than five minutes to cook. I heated up the frying pan and dry-fried it for about two minutes on each side and it was cooked through, so you could probably even cook it for a little less if you want your steak rare (I did, but I got distracted!).

To go with the steak, I made a tamagoyaki – something I am getting so much more adept at these days – and a salad of grated carrot with a little tahini, soy sauce and honey. The green stuff is chopped cucumber grown in a colleague’s garden – so nice on a hot day! 

Post-holiday bento

You may have noticed a lack of bentos on these pages. That. my friends, is down to the fact that I have been in France on holiday. I am now back, and back on my diet (hehe) and back to bento.

Today's bento is pretty simple. In the top layer is 100g brown rice mixed with 2tbsp petits pois (this is a great way to sneak in a portion of veg when space is limited) and topped with little stars cut from carrots.

In the bottom layer I put some purple sprouting broccoli, steamed carrot sticks, mini venison burgers (I made and froze these a couple of weeks ago) and a boiled egg moulded to look like a bunny:

The most time-consuming elements were boiling the rice (I just put an extra pan on when cooking my dinner) and making the stars, but it was still only about 35 minutes.

Vegetarian bento #1

Over the weekend I bought a new lunch box. I couldn’t resist it because it’s shaped like a LEGO brick:

As a result, I was very excited about packing today’s lunch. It’s a much larger box than I usually pack, so I have used lots of low-calorie filler like radishes. 

• Namul – this is a salad made with blanched greens, sesame oil, toasted sesame seeds and salt. I have topped each portion with a radish spiked on a panda pick to make it cuter and more colourful.
• Chopped radishes – to nibble on and to take up some space in the bento
• Egg in treasure bag – this is one of my favourite recipes of all time. I like to make a few at the start of the week and have them in bentos or slice them into soups.
• Poached carrot – this is just carrot that has been poached in the dashi/mirin/soy combo I used for the eggs
• Multi-coloured rice – I’m not sure the effect comes off that brilliantly, but there is supposed to be one layer of white rice and one layer of green rice. I’d say it is lightly green, and I have added some petits pois to enhance the effect. The green tinge was achieved by boiling the rice in the water I used to blanch greens for the namul

Party girl bento

Today’s bento only happened because I did all my cooking for the week yesterday afternoon. I made:

• A batch of carrot and sesame furikake
• A batch of my spicy beetroot salad (raw grated beetroot tossed with sesame seeds, chilli flakes, honey and rice vinegar)
• Tamagoyaki for this morning
• Boiled some eggs for later in the week

I also remembered to take a portion of rice out of the freezer and the end result was that despite getting to bed after 3am, I was still able to pack a bento because all I had to do was pan-fry a burger and arrange everything in my box.

Not too shabby, eh?

Sardine and paprika potatoes

I didn’t go out last night. I stayed in, listened to Radio 4, watched Coen brothers' movies and prepared today's bento.

• ·         Grilled sardine stuffed with lemon
• ·         Savoy cabbage sautéed with garlic and onion
• ·         Potatoes sautéed with salt, pepper and paprika
• ·         Tamagoyaki (into which I accidentally put dark soy instead of light)
• ·         Steamed broccoli
• ·         Lemon slice

A proper bento for once

Today is a bit of a "treat" bento. I made two, one for me and one for a friend, with identical contents:

Balsamic sesame chicken
Beetroot salad made with grated beetroot, 1tbsp rice vinegar, 1tbsp sesame seeds, 1/2 tsp chilli flakes and a drizzle of honey
Tamagoyaki
Savoy cabbage stir-fried with sesame and garlic
Parsnip kinpira
Fun-shaped onigiri (no filling)

Here are the results:

Protein for a cold day

For today’s bento I used:

Brown sushi rice mixed with chopped honey roast ham and topped with broccoli

Spicy beef meatballs – I made these ages ago and froze them, so I can remember exactly what I put in them, but it was something along the lines of cumin, chilli and tomato puree; egg in treasure bag; daikon in soy and mirin dressing

 

The only thing I did wrong was leave it til the last minute – this was all food I could have packed last night, but of course I faffed about and ended up doing it this morning and causing myself stress!

I made an effort this morning...

I haven’t really done much bento lately as the last few weeks have been a combination of NO TIME or LOTS OF LEFTOVERS or BEING HOME SICK and eating dry bran flakes for lunch because it was a better option than getting out of bed.

However, in celebration of my lovely new bento box:

 

I decided to make an effort this morning.

So, here we have organic brown sushi rice tossed with a handful of fine green beans which I’ve chopped. On top are some cute little honey roast ham shapes.

 

On top of that I put some little silicone cups filled with daikon radish in soy/mirin dressing; olives; chopped green beans; boiled quail’s eggs, and finally, I filled a bowl with healthy broccoli tossed with a little salt and some black sesame furikake.

Raiding the freezer

One of the things about cooking is that you often have leftovers. Especially if, like me, you grew up in a large, rambunctious Caribbean family where anyone might drop by and be included in the meal. 

Personally, I love leftovers because they make life that much easier on days when I am too tired/busy/late to cook. As I attempt to empty my freezer so I can fill it up with game, a lot of my bentos are going to involve defrosted leftovers.

The main leftover component in today’s bento is sardine fishcakes. I made these a couple of weeks ago from 150g mashed potato and one fresh sardine which I brushed with a little olive oil, sprinkled with chilli flakes, grilled, flaked and stirred into the mash with salt and pepper. The fishcakes have also been rolled in breadcrumbs to make them look more professional.

The other leftover component is cubed potato, leftover from earlier in the week, which I used to make a quick Spanish-style omelette. I really love Spanish tortilla and I think this is a nice way to make a single-portion one. You just need one egg, 25g cubed potato, ¼ clove of garlic and a tablespoon of onion or similar (I didn’t have onion this time so I used a bit of chopped leek).  I don’t even use oil – I just heat the pan (I get it quite hot so that the egg ‘takes’ immediately and doesn’t ooze out of the mould) pour the egg + veg mix into the mould and turn down the heat.

The not-so-leftover bit was buttered leeks which I made specially for this bento.