winged heart bento

i have seen some beautiful naturally-colored rice this week (two great examples are sheri’s pink heart and eat lunch’s love hearts), but — call me a cheater — this week i will be using good old fashioned food coloring to add some holiday spirit to my bentos.

tomorrow’s lunch has a winged heart onigiri (the strawberry fans look like wings to me — go with it!) seated on a bed of pomegranate seeds (with a tomato heart accent on the front) in the red section.  the yellow section has baby yellow carrot sticks, kumquats, and takuwan flowers.  the green section has two different kinds of veggie dumpling, with a few pea pods.  finally, the blue section has purple potato “chips” (roasted in the oven) and purple carrot discs.

in the center hole is some dipping sauce for the dumplings, the container for which is topped with a cool valentine’s sticker a generous bento pal sent me.  are you digging how i matched the food to the compartments?  that was an idea shared by multiple participants in hapa bento’s last 4-compartment-box giveaway!

love bears bento and contest winner

tomorrow’s bento features kong bap (frozen several weeks ago for my bento stash and then thawed tonight), sesame tofu, cheese-and-vegetarian-ham bears, cheese-and-nori hearts, a tamagoyaki heart, broccoli, carrot sticks, tomatoes, pea pods, and a strawberry mochi with a strawberry heart (in a valentine’s food cup you can’t really see from this angle).  the background paper is from a sweet bento pal, and the cool see-through fork is from a recyclable kids’ set!

since the sesame tofu — leftover from dinner — is buried under the kong bap, i thought i’d include a picture of that as well…

here’s my quick and easy recipe:

super simple, not-too-sweet sesame tofu

• 1 package extra firm tofu, cubed (i like 1/2″ cubes)
• 2 tbsp. cornstarch
• 1 tsp. garlic powder
• 1/2 tsp. ground ginger
• 1/4 tsp. cayenne pepper
• canola oil to coat a frying pan
• 4 tbsp. soy sauce
• 2 tbsp. honey
• 1 tbsp. minced fresh garlic
• 1 tbsp. sesame oil
• 1 tsp. gochu garu (korean red pepper flakes)
• 2 scallion stems, chopped
• 2 tbsp. sesame seeds

1. in a seal-able container, mix the cornstarch, garlic powder, ginger and cayenne.  once those ingredients are evenly combined, add the tofu and press the lid onto the container to seal it tightly.  shake the container vigorously until the cubes are evenly coated with the spice-and-cornstarch mixture.
2. add the canola oil to your frying pan and heat it up.  you don’t need to deep fry this tofu, but once the oil is hot add the coated cubes in one even layer.  (if your frying pan is too small to fit all the tofu, fry in batches.)  when the bottom side of the cube layer has browned, use a spatula to turn multiple cubes at a time.  fry for about 1 minute on each side until the cubes are crispy and evenly browned.  move the cubes onto paper towels so that some of the surface oil can be absorbed.
3. in the frying pan you used for the tofu cubes (no need to clean), add the soy sauce, honey, fresh garlic, sesame oil and pepper flakes.  once the honey warms up it will thin out, and then you will be able to stir these ingredients together.  once they’re mixed, add the tofu cubes back in and jiggle them around to coat with the glaze.
4. once the cubes are glazed, add the sesame seeds (the cubes will now be sticky enough to hold them).  the sesame tofu is now ready to serve — garnish with chopped scallions, and serve with rice and veggies of your choosing!

– ♥ –

thanks to everyone who participated in the vacation contest!  you all shared such beautiful bentos and wonderful recipes and bento ideas in the comments, i have really enjoyed reading them (and will definitely be referring back to this list when i need inspiration)!  we had 74 entries (not counting incorrect destination guesses), and the winner proved that playing the odds can really pay off.  she had the most correct entries of all the participants, and so i wasn’t that surprised when the random integer generator picked one of her numbers!  (i had already used the list randomizer to assign numbers to all the correct entries; a portion of the list is visible below.)

congratulations to angelene t.!!  please get in touch with your address information so that i can ship out your prize package.  and to all the other participants, sorry you didn’t win this time, but i hope you enjoyed the links everyone shared… and stay tuned, there will be more bento zen contests in the future!

 

red bahn mi bento

i know, the bahn mi itself is not red, but this is my contribution to hapa bento’s BOMB (“best of the month bento”) challenge.  february’s theme is heart-healthy, holiday-friendly RED!

a quick and easy bento tonight with no frills — i had a bad day at work and didn’t feel too inspired.  but look, i have a red flower prop, a red box, some red tomatoes with a red flowered skewer, and even a red bento belt!  that counts, right?  and the cute mushroom paper did cheer me up a bit.

this bahn mi is from a new place that the boyfriend discovered in our neighborhood, bahn mi zon.  i like their sandwiches better than the place i had been going to previously — they are bigger, and the baguette is more tender.  this one’s filled with marinated mushrooms, tofu, and your standard cucumber-cilantro-daikon-carrot combination.

rounding out the box are a pear fan (the pear is also kinda reddish!) and two takuwan fans, some blueberries, and the tomatoes.  underneath that stuff i buried a babybel cheese and some cucumber slices.  this box is pretty deep, which is why it works for the sandwich halves, but which also means that some food items won’t be visible.

want a contest hint?   i thought so!  ok — in the country i’ll be visiting, putrified shark meat is a traditional food.  i’m pretty brave when it comes to trying new things (i ate some pretty unimaginable animal parts in shanghai), and i’ll go with an open mind, but the word “putrified” is inherently unappetizing, no?  i bet it wouldn’t look great in bento, either!

lioness bento

another quick bento tonight, since i got back from a completely bananas movie pretty late and (shamefully) ate pizza and popcorn for dinner, thereby producing no leftovers for bento purposes. what do you do when you have no leftovers? grilled cheese to the rescue! and what makes a grilled cheese better? fried egg!

recently a sweet bento pal sent me this cool nesting onigiri set with a family of lions on the lids (thanks again, you-know-who!). i’ve seen susan of hawai’i’s bento box cookbook use this same set beautifully, and i thought i’d try my hand at a lion kyaraben. using susan’s technique, i cut the bread with the medium-sized onigiri case, making perfect sized sandwiches for the larger case. i used lucky sundae and pikko’s toothpick technique for cutting the lioness’ cheese muzzle; then i used manicure scissors to cut her nose, and a nori punch to cut her whisker holes and eyes/eyelashes. i added a fringe of yellow baran to simulate a mane!

filling the medium and small-sized onigiri cases i have a simple assortment of fruit and veggies: roasted butternut squash, pea pods, and grape tomatoes in the medium case, and blueberries, grapes, kiwi slices and clementine segments in the small one. i added a sunshine baran to cheer the fruit section up a bit. as props, i have a doily i received from another bento pal (aren’t my friends the best?!), and one of the pieces from this lego utensil set.

ready for another contest hint? well, i was starting to worry about what kind of bento withdrawal i will experience on vacation, and so i did a little research to see what my japanese takeaway options would be in the city i’m visiting. turns out i can get some simple sushi-based bentos to go, and they’ll run me from 990kr to 1480kr, depending on the size.

keep guessing, bento friends — i’ve so enjoyed the bento links you’ve shared, but so far nobody has guessed the correct destination!!

[as seen on i'd eat that]

bento zen vacation contest!

a few months back, debra over at hapa bento ran a great contest, where participants had to guess where she was going on vacation… it was very cool and very “where in the world is carmen sandiego” (uh oh, i’m dating myself). since i’m leaving for a short getaway this thursday night, i thought it would be fun to do the same thing (thanks for letting me use the idea, debra!)…

so, here are the rules:

1. the contest starts as of this post, and it ends sunday, february 7th, at 11:59pm EST. since it’s such a short one, you are allowed to enter twice a day.
2. i’ll be posting clues about where i’m headed on this page and on my twitter account (@bentozen), so keep your eye out for them!
3. when you think you know my vacation destination, email your guess to bentozen@gmail.com, and then leave a comment on this post linking to your latest bento (or in the case of your second daily entry, to a past favorite bento you made, or to a recipe you’d like to share or try for bento)!
4. when i get back from vacation, i’ll take all the correct guesses and enter them into a random drawing for the prize package. i will announce the winner here on the morning of monday, february 8th.

and here are the prize details i know you’ve been eagerly awaiting! the prize package includes:

• one square 870ml lock-n-lock bento box with 2 removable 2-compartment inserts (for a total of 4 compartments when both inserts are inside the box). this box seals very tightly, making it great for wetter foods, and even though it’s not particularly kawaii, it’s a sturdy and practical box that will beautifully show off your food!
• one rectangular, striped blue, 430ml sopra bento box. this one is cute and fairly small, excellent for kids’ meals. (it’s this exact box; sorry for the glare in the photo!)
• one box of the often-coveted chocolate biscuit mushrooms by meiji!
• one box of the oh-so-cute kabaya petit pastels i recently discussed!
• one package of 5 sets of colorful flowered chopsticks — great as a prop for your bento photos.
• one hello kitty “pill case” — it has 4 little lidded compartments that separate from each other so that you can include just one in a bento. these would make great mayo or mustard cases.
• one set of small paper food cups, assorted designs — this set includes an all-green design (st. patrick’s day is coming up!), an all-red design (little tomatoes?), and an all-yellow design.
• one yellow banana putifresh bento tote — it’s a versatile size that will accommodate most bento boxes.
• assorted packages of jillibean felt shapes — i use these as props too; they add a pop of contrasting color against background paper, and look cute as a faux chopstick rest. (the ones in the photo are my own; yours will still be in the original packaging.)
• and speaking of background paper, i’m also including more than 50 sheets of colorful background paper, hand-picked by me from the kaleidoscope and citronella sets. many of these are reversible, so you’re getting far more than 50 patterns. i removed these sheets from the larger packs they came in, but they are completely unused, and will come to you protected inside a plastic bag.

good luck everyone… i can’t wait to see your bentos and recipes, and of course your clever guesses!

oh, and i almost forgot — your first hint! since yesterday was a quiet sunday, i took the time to do some of my packing in advance… i’m taking plenty of sweaters, as it’s very cold where i’m going!

garlic birds bento

my bento for tomorrow’s lunch was a quick and easy combination of leftovers from tonight’s nice dinner.  for an entree, we had whole wheat pasta with vegetarian meatballs and tomato-garlic-mushroom sauce, and on the side, we had toaster-roasted butternut squash.

sometimes brownish-red chunky entrees don’t photograph well, so i tossed the leftover pasta in the back of the box and topped it with some grated parmesan and parsley, as well as a few halved baby tomatoes and two yellow music note food picks.  in the front of the box, i fanned a few pieces of the butternut squash, added three crinkle-cut cucumber slices, a food cup with blueberries and kiwi flowers, and a few pea pods to fill in empty spaces.

for a fun accent, i made a family of garlic bread birds.  the birds are cut with cookie cutters from a pita flat that i brushed with olive oil, sprinkled with garlic powder, and then toasted; after the cut shapes had cooled, i added cheese wings.  have you noticed that i’m practically obsessed with birds lately (see exhibits A, B and C)?  not sure why that is… but birds sure are cute in bento!

all in all, this bento only took about 15 minutes to put together — no fancy cutting, no application of nori with tweezers, just a simple and easy work-night option.

by the way, the boxed beverage in the background of this picture is banana ooyoo (바나나맛우유) — banana milk.  it tastes like what’s left in the bottom of your bowl after you finish a heaping portion of sugary cereal with banana slices on top; in other words, it’s awesome.  you can become a facebook fan of banana ooyoo here (the fan page informs me that “girls generation are banana milk drinkers”!), and the company’s crazy webpage with tons of widgets is here.

my contest post is all queued and set to publish at 8:30am EST tomorrow… so check back then if you’re interested in participating!

kabaya petit pastel

my favorite new sweet treat!

– ♥ –

valentine’s day is almost here… looking for something cute to include in your sweetie’s bento?  i just had to share this adorable candy i found this week at my korean grocer.  it’s called “petit pastel,” and as you can see, it’s shaped like tiny ice cream cones!  the cones are chocolate, and the colored “scoops” are white-chocolate-covered malt balls.

you can view some cute engrish about the product at the manufacturer’s website, and you can buy it online at ebay (here or here), or at this japanese candy site.  (check your local asian market though — they were $1 cheaper at mine!)

– ♥ –

and if you like what you see, stay tuned… tomorrow i’ll be posting details of this week’s giveaway, and the prize package includes an unopened box of petit pastel!

kalbi jjim – rice cooker recipe!

no bentos this weekend, but i did have a chance to try making one of the boyfriend’s favorite dishes, kalbi jjim, in my new rice cooker — and it came out great! the boyfriend doesn’t like his with anything but meat, but this dish is also great with potatoes, carrots, chestnuts, and any sort of mushroom.

i actually a really hard time finding a rice cooker recipe for this, and the while the “cooking guide” for my rice cooker did include a kalbi jjim recipe, it’s entirely in korean! my korean’s not that good yet.. so, i ended up having to make my own up, by combining several stovetop recipes (including my boyfriend’s mom’s!) and then modifying for this shorter and pressure-based cooking method.

many rice cookers have a “multi-cook” pressure setting for foods other than rice (on my cuckoo, it’s labeled “만능찜”), making them extremely versatile kitchen workhorses! in case you are looking to put your rice cooker to extra use on a delicious korean beef dish, here’s my recipe:

gamene’s kalbi jjim

NOTE 1: my rice cooker holds 6 cups of rice; if you have a 10-cup cooker, feel free to use twice the amount of meat, but you won’t need to double the marinade.

NOTE 2: steps 1-5 below are a little bit cumbersome, but we’re still talking less than an hour here, and you’re going to save tons of time on step 6 by doing this in the rice cooker instead of on the stove. plus, you can do these steps the night before.

ingredients:

• 2 “racks” of beef short ribs – i bought a package of 4 racks at my korean market and froze 2 of them. you should be using the thick korean rib cut, which is cut across (not parallel to) the bones, leaving 3 chunks of bone in each rack — this is technically called “flanken” style. (these should be about 6″ long and 1.5-2″ wide on all sides.)
• 2 kiwis, skin removed and cut into quarters
• 3 tbsp. honey or brown sugar
• 3 tbsp. minced garlic
• 3/4 cup 7-up (not diet)
• 1 and 1/2 cups daikon (skin removed and cut into approx. 1″ square cubes, but they don’t need to be too uniform)
• 1 bunch green onions (ends removed and chopped into approx. 2″ long pieces; reserve a few pieces for garnish)
• 4 tbsp. sesame oil
• 1/2 cup soy sauce
• 3 tbsp. rice wine vinegar (or plain white heinz vinegar)
• peeled and chunked potatoes, carrots, chestnuts, and/or whole mushroom caps (all of these are optional!)

instructions:

1. fill a large pot about halfway with water, and put it on your stove over a high flame. this should be the first thing you do, so that the water can come to a boil while you’re working on the marinade. i know, you’re like “wait a minute, i thought this was a rice cooker recipe” — but you still have to prep the meat on the stove. don’t worry, it’ll be quick!
2. in a food processor, blend the daikon, kiwi, green onion, garlic, sesame oil, soy sauce, honey or brown sugar, vinegar, and 7-up — everything but the meat (and veggies, if you’re using them). pulse these ingredients together until you get to a consistency that’s more liquid-y than a paste, but not as thin as water (this isn’t hard; the daikon will prevent the mixture from really thinning out too much). this marinade will be a gross brownish-green color; don’t freak out, that’s normal! dump your marinade into a big tupperware (one that is large enough to also hold the ribs!).
3. once your water is boiling, put the ribs in it and leave them there for about 20 minutes. i know it seems counterintuitive to boil your ribs before cooking them, but this step helps get the blood and extra fat out. once 20 minutes have passed, the ribs will be a uniform greyish-brown, and there will be a bunch of gross stuff (honestly, the best word for this is “scum”) floating on the top of the water. skim that off and throw it out (so it doesn’t clog your drain), drain the water, and rinse the ribs in cold water.
4. score the meat. to do this, take a very sharp knife, and cut lines about 1/2″ deep, running parallel to the entire 6″ length of the rack, about 1/2″ apart (so you should fit about 3 lines going the long way). then go cross-wise, making a grid pattern of these incisions. scoring the meat will help the marinade penetrate it.
5. put the ribs into your marinade-filled tupperware and… well, marinate them! if possible, it’s best to leave them in there overnight (though my boyfriend’s mom swears that the 7-up helps the marinade work effectively in as little as 30 minutes!).
6. when it’s time to cook the meat, dump the ribs AND the marinade into your rice cooker’s pot, along with any vegetables you’ve chosen to include (these don’t need to be marinated, since they aren’t nearly as fibrous and tough to penetrate as the beef). then press the button for your multi-cook/pressure setting. if your rice cooker is using pressure, you’ll only need to set the cooking time for about 35-40 minutes. if your rice cooker slow-cooks non-rice foods, you should set it for at least 60 minutes, and then keep checking it in 15-minute increments after that (it’s done when it’s tender and falling off the bone)!
7. with tongs, transfer the pieces of meat onto a serving dish and garnish with sesame seeds (i’ve also seen pine nuts) and chopped green onion. discard the cooked marinade that you’ve left in the rice cooker’s pot. serve the kalbi with rice (plain short-grain white rice is traditional, but feel free to opt for healthier brown) and a side of kimchi!

BON APPETIT!

kamaboko “mushrooms” bento

tomorrow’s lunch is all about kamaboko / fish cake / fish sausage / fish paste — whatever you call it, it tastes good and it’s fun to play with!

my faux mushrooms are made from one slice each of a pink-and-white kamaboko “loaf,” and one slice each from the end of a piece of fish sausage. they have peas for spots on their mushroom caps (using a drinking straw, i dug out a little hole in the kamaboko for each pea to rest in), and their faces consist of sesame sides, nori mouths, and ketchup cheeks. they’re propped up on leftover furikake’d-out-the-wazoo rice from last night’s inarizushi dinner.

in the top part of the box, i have broccoli topped by some takuwan and carrot flowers, pea pods, a few grape tomatoes, a strawberry-and-blackberry skewer, a few cucumber slices (hidden in the back), and some home-made lotus chips.

here’s a close-up of my mushroom friends, and then the lotus chip recipe…

gamene’s spicy lotus chips

• 1/3 pack of pre-sliced lotus root (these will be in the produce or frozen section of your japanese grocer; they are vacuum sealed with liquid in a plastic package)
• 2 tbsp. olive oil
• kosher salt and black pepper to taste
• 1 tsp. garlic powder and 1 tsp. gochu garu (korean red pepper flakes)

1. pre-heat your oven to 375. lightly coat a baking sheet (you can use aluminum foil with cooking spray, or a silpat if you have it).
2. shake most of the liquid off of your lotus root slices (but you don’t have to go crazy drying them with paper towels or anything). in a bowl, toss the lotus root slices with the oil and spices.
3. spread them out on one even layer on your baking sheet, and bake for about 10 minutes (or until you start to smell them, open the oven, and find they are starting to brown!).
4. flip them over one by one and continue baking for about another 8 minutes. when the second side is starting to brown, turn the oven off but leave the chips in there. i find that if i just let them cook with residual heat as the oven cools down, they dry out better and end up crispier. voila — enjoy!

ok bento pals, that’s it for me this week… wishing you all a great weekend, can’t wait to bento with you next week!

[as seen on makers of the cutest food on the planet]

inarizushi garden bento

lia over at my bentolicious has a sushi theme going this week, and she inspired me to whip up some inarizushi.  the brand of skins i buy is actually korean (manufactured by daerim corporation); you can see it in the top row of products on this page.  i like this particular product because a) it comes with tiny packages of furikake and vinegar for mixing into the rice, and b) the actual aburaage are triangular shaped corners, which makes for a cute stuffed final product.

in march 2009, maki posted great step-by-step instructions for making this dish over at just hungry; i followed her exact instructions for cooking the aburaage, but the possibilities for flavoring the rice itself are endless!

my inarizushi pockets are topped with cheese-and-nori flowers (sesame seed centers) with pea pod leaves, and the fruit and veggie tier has broccoli, baby carrot sticks, tamagoyaki slices, grape tomatoes, blueberries on a skewer (i like how the wooden ball looks like a blueberry, too!), and edamame shumai.  i topped the shumai and broccoli with a few extra sakura petals to tie the two tiers together.

can’t wait to tuck into this one!

oh, and if you like the little felt flower shape my chopsticks are resting on, stay tuned… i’m planning a giveaway, and will be posting details some time next week.