Asian Inspired Bento 2


Finally getting around to posting on last week's bento. I'm finding going with an Asian theme tends to make for very quick turn around on cooking time. Preparation is key, if you can get everything chopped up and sauces done ahead of time then cooking is pretty straightforward and simple. Usually just a quick stir fry and you're done. So no narrow ethnic theme this time just a few dishes from Japanese and Chinese cooking.

For the main protein I put together this miso glazed chicken. Very simple marinade of miso, soy and brown sugar which sat with the chicken overnight. Some people will argue for shorter time saying that I'm risking the chicken to be too salty, but I used a white miso paste (which tends to be less salty) and I've done it before without much problem. So for what it's worth I did the experiment for you and overnight didn't hurt at least with chicken. As the chicken baked I boiled down the marinade and used it to glaze the chicken.

Can't have Asian food without serving some sort of rice. I decided I wanted to make it interesting instead of punking out with simple jasmine rice. After cooking I tossed it in a bit of sesame oil and added both black and white sesame seeds. This turned out to be very fragrant with notes of jasmine intermingled with sesame. I even broke out of my low carb shell to have a bit more than I should have, very tasty stuff.

So as I posted earlier I wanted to do a bit more with the King Oyster/Abalone mushroom. Abalone mushroom is probably a very good name for this mushroom, some friends of mine had this at a Chinese restaurant and went looking for the dish in menu under the seafood section only to discovery it was a mushroom they were eating. I think the mushroom has quite a wide range of applications because of it's very durable texture. Anyway very meaty fungi was tossed in with some bamboo shoots and Thai purple basil. The sauce foundation was made with black vinegar, a new ingredient for me. It's kind of hard to explain the taste of black vinegar, it's not as strong as standard vinegar and has some elements that remind me of malt vinegar (but not quite). Either way this dish turned out to be very popular with my bento-ers.

For a quasi desert and quasi salad I went with this asian pear and cucumber salad with a chili vinegar dressing. This is similar to a garlic quick pickle that I do, adding the pear and chili was an interesting addition.

Box Contents

  • Miso Glazed Chicken
  • Sesame Rice
  • Abalone Mushroom in Black Vinegar sauce
  • Asian pear and Cucumber Salad

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Da Chang Mian Xian 大腸麵線: streetfood challenge

Image
This is actually a post that's been sitting in the queue for quite some time. A while back we had a Taiwanese potluck where everyone brought a food favorite from Taiwan. I didn't have a favorite food so I said I'd make whatever someone wanted. One of my wife's friends had a real hankering for Da Chang Mian Xian (大腸麵線 also called Mee Sua), a Taiwanese vermicelli street food dish, I of course open my big mouth and say: "sure how hard could it be to make?" (famous last words). Surely there was a recipe or something to go on. As it turns out this no there's wasn't a recipe to go on. Fortunately this was something I had tried before, my wife took me back in 2012 to visit her favorite Mian Xian  restaurant (Ah Zong Mian Xian 阿宗麵線) when we were visiting her old university stomping grounds.  All I remember from this place were a few things: 1) it was really hot outside 2) there was no where to sit so everyone was standing around (ok a few chairs) 3) th
Read more

TRIP: London 2013 Pt1

Image
Ok more traveling, this time to London, first week for work (above is our view of Buckingham Palace from our office) and second week for vacation with my wife. Lots of pictures of a lot of different food, I've manage to cut the number of photos to the highlights of what and where we ate. I've put links to the various places just in case you're in the area and want to check out some of these places. Sorry in advance about some of the photos I shot everything using a Galaxy S3 mini android phone that I acquired while on this trip and it does a pretty good job, but under low light it gets a bit grainy. Got off the plane bright and early 6am and dropped my bags at the hotel. While there I started my trip off with a classic English breakfast. Bangers (sausage) mushroom, roasted tomato, potato cake, hash browns, vegetarian sausage (which was quite nice), eggs, beans (heinz I believe) and some black pudding (blood sausage, a little dry but tasty) Since my room wasn'
Read more

Holiday Bird ala the Orion Cooker "la torre del diablo"

Image
I've talked a bit about my Orion Cooker or as I like to call it, "la torre del diablo" (the tower of the devil) and lots of people come and visit looking for info on the orion cooker and turkey. So today I'm going to chronicle the step by step of cooking a turkey and hey look, just in time for xmas. It all starts with the brine. As many of you know the best way to get a nice juicy turkey is to brine it before hand. It allows helps the meat retain moisture through the cooking process and you can impart some nice flavors. I used a slightly modified brine recipe (see below) by my favorite food geek/hero, Alton Brown. It's quite simple really, you need a high salt content I believe the rule of thumb is one cup each of salt and sugar for every gallon of brine. In this case, the vegetable stock has salt in it, and I trust that's why there's less salt in the recipe, and of course the word of Alton Brown is never wrong he is after all the culinary equivalent of C
Read more