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Showing posts from February, 2011

Mediterranean Light Bento

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Works been nuts, I've had the photos ready but haven't had a chance to proof read and fire off the post. So I did get a chance to cook up a bento this week, I just didn't get my post out. So my inspiration? My original idea centered around a stuffed chicken breast something to do with a horseradish cheddar and some ham. I was talking about it with a coworker and she really wanted something light to go with that. Ultimately I decided to go with a Mediterranean inspired bento. There's a terminology thing going on here and a bit of confusion, see Mediterranean cuisine isn't cuisine locked to a particular country, it involves food from a region, in this case countries around the Mediterranean sea, Turkey being one of them. At the same time Turkey is also counted in Middle Eastern cuisine (and depending on who you ask some of the other Mediterranean countries). The term Mediterranean cuisine was apparently coined in the 1975 as more of a marketing term. Anyhow, i've

Chinese New Year Bento

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It's been a tough year to get restarted on the cooking track. I've had family visit, work interruptions all manner of excuses. I had wanted to get this bento out last week but events conspired against me. So I present Chinese New Year Bento (two weeks late). I figured I've done Valentine's day bentos in the past besides, the bento project is about exposing my diners to new foods and culture so this would be a little more. Lions are a Chinese symbol for joy and happiness. The lion's head meatball is traditionally pretty large maybe baseball sized. I went with golf ball so I could fit three of them into the box. The greens represent the lion's mane. It's a really tasty braised pork meatball that is first seared and finished with the bok choi over the top of the meatball to steam down for the final cooking process. Lion dances and Dragon dances are a prominent tradition with Chinese New Year. Loud fire crackers and red paper were discovered to be the bane of th

Happy Chinese New Year!

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Ok Belated, but this week was Chinese New Year and I had family in town to celebrate. Happy Year of the Rabbit. It's great having a house full of people and coming home to busy activity. Yes, it got old after a few days, but I had a good time with my family and hanging out with my new brother in-law. I apologize for the sparse posts and I do wish I had time for a bento but work is killing it for this next week I'm hoping to get back to it next week. Anyhow I figure I could at least post something. So a big part of Chinese New Year is the feast. The idea of New Years is a large feast so that you don't cook for the following days. I've taken pictures of our feast and I'll share with you what we ate. We start with a happy family made with a meaty variety of squid and roasted duck. Next we have a classic "cold plate" of beef tendon, sliced red roasted tenderloin, thousand year old egg, peel and eat shrimp, chinese sausage and quick pickled cucumber. Followed