Bento in the Park

Bento I made last Sunday Because of the gorgeous weather, I got so obsessed with the idea of “lunch in the park” last weekend. On Saturday, I bought sandwich and canned coffee at a convenience store and enjoyed them in the park. But on Sunday, I went a little further and made a homemade bento. Do you want to know what the food in the bento box is? OK, starting with the rice balls: * Onigiri with minced takana pickles (green) and with salmon flakes (pink). * Shiso and chicken meatballs * Tamagoyaki (rolled omelet), * Grilled salmon with shimeji mushrooms, mitsuba leaves and miso-mayonnaise glaze, and * Grapes. This bento was just so-so, to tell you the truth. The food tasted rather bland in the park, even though I thought everything was OK when I had tasted it in my kitchen. Also, the “bento in the park” attempt on Sunday wasn’t as successful as that on Saturday. I couldn’t find a good place to sit down and take a photo of bento like I did last year. And it was a little hot, and several mosquitoes bugged the hell out of me. Yeah, I was their lunch. And even though I brought my camera to take some shots of early signs of autumn, grasses and trees in the park were still green and I didn't see any autumn flower. So here I posted a photo that I took on my way back from the park. This was the only photo of a sign of autumn. Oh well, there’ll be more weekends to come, so we’ll see… Categories: Japanese

Sweet Success after Sweet Failure

Chicken and Vegetable Stif-fry with a Secret Ingredient Seventeen days. It was obviously too long. I’m talking about my nashi (Asian pear) infused vodka. It has been seventeen days since I sank those pear segments in vodka. I should have checked it once in a while, but I just gave it a good rest in the dark in my small cupboard. In other words, I almost forgot about it. Besides, considering how long it took for my grape-infused vodka to be really flavorful, I thought I should give it 3 weeks or so. Wrong idea. I opened the jar today for the first time to check how it was doing, and I hated myself for waiting that long. The moment I smelled the vodka, I was almost shocked. It smelled sweet indeed, but not the kind of fruity sweetness that I had in mind. How should I describe it…? The smell reminded me of some kind of chocolate bonbons with real strong liquor in. No, I'm not saying that my vodka smelled like chocolate. You know the kind of bonbon that has a layer of coarse sugar or candy inside? The smell of my nashi infused vodka reminded me of that boozed-up coarse sugar! And it was so strong that it almost knocked me down. I strained the vodka and poured some in a glass to experiment. I added some ice and water to see if I can smell and taste the pears when it's thinned. Yes, I did, but not the way I wanted. It was not fruity at all. It was more like over-ripened pears that already lost its fragrance and is going bad pretty soon. Maybe it might taste OK if mixed with other drinks, but I had no idea what can be the right kind of drinks for that. Instead, an idea popped up in my mind. Can’t I use it for cooking? I heard about using vodka or bourbon for cooking chicken, so why not this infused vodka? So here is a Chinese-style dish I improvised: Chicken and veggie stir-fry with good amount of Asian- pear infused vodka! I marinated the chicken briefly in garlic, soy sauce and the vodka, then stir-fried it with minced garlic and ginger root and other vegetables. For seasoning, I used salt, pepper and about a teaspoonful Dou ban jiang (Chinese chili paste) dissolved in mirin, and at the end I added soy sauce and a good amount of my nashi- infused vodka! While I was stir-frying, I did smell the fruity nashi flavor a little. Maybe because the alcohol evaporated while being heated? Unfortunately I couldn’t detect the fruity flavor in the chicken when I ate it, but the dish turned out quite good. Honestly, I loved it. It was sweet, but the sweetness was a little different from what it usually is when used sugar and/or mirin only --- it was milder. Feeling good about this success, and feeling the urge to go out and eat lunch outside in gorgeous autumn weather, I packed my lunch and headed for a nearby park. Kinmokusei (orange osmanthus) was in full bloom there in the park. The weather is certainly cooling off around here. (This photo was taken last Thursday in the same park. The flowers looked just the same today.) It was a nice day after all, but I’ll be careful next time I infuse vodka with fruits and I'll definitely check it more often ;P

OK, Let's Talk about Bento

The topic has been brought up in the comments to my previous post, so why not ;) 298-yen bentos Bento means packed lunch or packed meal in Japanese. Those you see in the photo above are the 298-yen (apx. US$2.66 ?) bentos at a supermarket not too far from my apartment. Yep, all these are 298 yen each. I wouldn’t say they are very tasty, but with this low price, how can you complain? Talking about bento, there are roughly 2 types of bento places around here --- where they sell pre-packed cold bentos (though they can warm them up there with microwave) and where they pack warm bento after you order one at the counter there. The supermarkets and convenience stores fall into the former category. The latter, franchised bento shops, used to be my favorite but not so much any more. This is one of the bento shops near my apartment that sell warm bentos. There, you take a look at the samples in the showcase and order the one(s) you like, then take a seat in the shop and wait. The part-timers there of course do not cook everything from scratch after you made an order… most of the food is prepared or pre-seasoned already and all that’s left to do is to deep fry or grill or heat it. So the waiting time can be around 5 minutes or less… well, depending on what and how many of the bentos you order. Read More Samples in the showcase You noticed some samples have 2 prices in the tag? The top one is the price of the bento with warm rice, and the one at the bottom is the price without rice. If you already have some cooked rice at home, you can buy a bento without rice and make it even cheaper. Good idea, isn’t it? Nori-ben This nori bento (called “Nori-ben” for short) literally means “bento with dried seaweed (nori).” When this type of franchise shops became popular in Japan, this nori-ben was the most popular menu because it was the cheapest one and yet quite filling, though lacking in vitamins. “I’m going to have nori-ben.” or “I live on nori-ben” was synonymous with “I’m broke now,” ...well... at least among my friends. In earlier days, in a typical nori-ben, you didn’t see anything more than soy-sauce seasoned bonito flakes all over the rice covered with a big sheet of dried seaweed. Oh, maybe a few slices of pickles were on the rice. This one in the photo is a little upgraded version, thus could be a little smaller than the earlier versions, I suppose. Of course, other than the bentos in plastic containers like these, we have more elaborate, expensive kind of bentos in Japan if you don’t mind paying good amount of money. Those are the ones from famous traditional Japanese restaurants. I cannot afford to blog about them right now, but maybe someday I would give it a try. …. Hopefully.

Eki-Ben

Ekiben Ekiben means packed meals you can buy at train stations or on the train, often with local specialties of the area that you're traveling in. This is the bento I bought at the station and ate on the train on my way back from Okayama on Sunday, 22nd. The rain on that day really messed up my plan in Okayama and I was very disappointed on my way back. That triggered me to buy a rather expensive bento to make up for the fun that I missed. Everything tasted very good, which eased my disappointment a little. BTW, to take this photo, I waited for the guy sitting next to me on the train to go to sleep. I can take food photos in public when I’m with another food blogger, like fish fish, but when I’m alone, I’m still shy…. ;P

Ohanami Bento

Ohanami Bento Ohanami means flower-viewing. Bento is lunchbox. This is what I brought to a nearby park today to eat under the cherry trees there. Mame-gohan (rice with green peas) onigiri Stuffed Shiitake mushroom Tamagoyaki Roasted Prawn with eggyolk and cornmeal This is something close to what my mom loves to make for occasions like New Year’s day. But the ones I made today tasted just so-so...nothing great. I should have brought soy sauce or lemon slice for them. My bento and cherry blossoms… When I was taking this pic, some people were watching me like “What the hell is she doing?” ;P And some more cherry blossom pics here...

Childhood Memories ...

Lunchbox that makes me feel nostalgic... I went for a sketching excursion yesterday, and this was the lunch I brought with me. This time I didn't want to spend too much time on it, so I went for something quick & easy and also very popular when I was a kid. See the artificially-colored, bright-red fish meat sausages? Don't they look really bad for your health? I never buy this kind of sausages any more, but in my childhood, kids (including myself) were crazy about them, especially when they were shaped like these: Tulips, crab and octopus Gee, I still remembered how to do this! In my elementary school days, I practiced this quite a lot when I packed lunch for my younger sister's school excursion. We also loved to have the crab- and octopus-shaped ones in our yakisoba (stir-fried noodles). About other things in the lunchbox: Tamagoyaki (fried eggs or rolled omelet): Usually kids like it sweet, but my mom's mother sometimes made savory one for me. The eggs are seasoned with salt, soy sauce and MSG but no sugar, and chopped scallions (often with dried baby fish) are added. It's important to fry thoroughly until it looks slightly brown in order to bring out the natural, subtle sweetness of the soy sauce and eggs. I made the savory kind today. The cucumber stick in chikuwa (steamed and grilled fish cake ): This always comes in handy. No seasoning necessary, and looks kind of nice in a lunchbox. And for making this kind of rice balls, I never use plastic wrap. These are the typical ones my mom always made in my childhood, and at that time, plastic wrap was probably already invented but not yet popular in my hometown. So, the image of this kind of rice balls was imprinted in me without the plastic wrap, and now I just can't relate them in my mind.

Special Lunchbox

My special lunch When the weather is gorgeous like this, I can’t resist the urge to pack my lunch and eat it outside. Sometimes I grab just anything in the kitchen, and other times I feel like packing a very special lunch, taking time for preparation. Today I felt like the latter. So here’s what I brought to the park which is a part of the Castle Garden here in this city. Bamboo sheath lunchbox and wrapping cloth This retro-looking lunchbox is again from the 100-yen shop. Bamboo sheath was said to be widely used in Japan in the past (maybe until 50 to 100 years ago?) to wrap rice balls to bring to work. Now we use plastic lunchboxes, but the retro-looking ones are still available. I don’t think they’d look good at school or in the office, but perfectly appropriate for picnicking. I made 3 kinds of rice balls. For the pink ones, I used seasoned salmon flakes --- one of those ready-made toppings to sprinkle on rice. The color of the green ones came from the minced Takana pickles that I mixed in. The last kind had a bit of Korean taste. I seasoned minced carrots, shiitake mushrooms and ground meat with kochujan, then mixed with the rice. Pretty good and spicy, but would have been better if I used kimchi instead of the carrots and mushrooms.　In the past I didn’t make much of the idea of using saran wrap for making rice balls, but I changed my mind recently. This way you can hold the rice balls without getting sticky rice on your fingers when you eat. (Or you can use chopsticks, of course.) A close-up The tiny taro potatoes were microwaved, salted, then sprinkled with green laver. This was an idea I got from a women’s magazine, but they didn’t taste as good as I expected. Maybe I microwaved them too long. Then, the small fried eggs. What you see in the center is minced scallions with the kochujan-seasoned stuff I made for the rice balls. What was a hit this time was the rolled chicken with dwarf French beans(?) in the center. I just love the way it looks when sliced. The dwarf French beans could have used more seasoning, but the garlicky teriyaki sauce I made to season the chicken was a big success. I was lucky that almost no one, except one young couple playing catch in the same park, was there to watch me taking so many photos of my lunchbox. ; ) I wanted to include some lovely autumn flowers in the photos with my lunchbox, but it was harder than I thought. Maybe the couple were watching me and laughing, but they at least didn't show that to me. Thanks, guys.