Eating in a box

Back to Peru, I still have ingredients on hand from the last Peruvian bento so this is still a continuation of my pantry raid. There were so many awesome dishes that I spied from last time I felt it was a perfect time to sling in another Peru based theme. The cuisine is quite rich, lots of starches and heavy meat so I really struggled to make recipe alterations and pick things that would at least feel light. I think since my bento-ers eat these things in two sittings I'm still ok with the healthy theme. We start with a Seco De Res. I again went with a Chuck Shoulder Roast cut of beef here, I think it's probably the best cut of meat to stand up to four hour slow cooking. I alternated the crock pot between high and low settings each of the four hours hoping to shorten the cooking time but still get the most out of the longer slow braise. I loved the braising liquid, it consisted of two bunches of cilantro pureed down, some aromatics and of course beer (I only had guiness on hand,...

We have a bit of a Frankenstein theme this week. I still couldn't let Peru go, there were just so many more things I wanted to try. I was ready to go ahead and put together another Peru bento when Lindsay from Apron Adventures was kind enough to drop off a grapefruit and grapefruit accessories basket from the folks at Texas Sweet . This of course got me thinking grapefruit theme, but I really wanted to stick with using the grapefruit on a subtler level rather than the more obvious fruit salad or fish with grapefruit slices and I still wanted to do a bit of peruvian cuisine. I found two recipes from each theme and I think they all pair nicely together, so I present to you grapefruitperu, citroperu, perufruit ok it's a confused theme we'll just have to roll with it. So our main entree is a grilled shrimp marinated in grapefruit bbq sauce. Dead simple to make, I ended up tweaking the sauce recipe because it came out a bit thin and I had hoped for a better coating, I also opt...

I'm not sure what possessed me to pick Peruvian food as the theme for the box. The country just popped into my head and I just started digging. I learned a lot about the cuisine and apparently it's a melting pot claiming connections to Japan, China, Africa, French, and Italian immigrants to name a few. This mix became very apparent while reading through collection after collection of recipes and websites. It was a fun exercise getting a week's worth of immersion looking into the country and it's cuisine. I've no doubt barely scratched the surface and am so intrigued by what I found, I'll no doubt have a return to Peru bento somewhere in the future. I tried my best to pick and imagine the combination of flavors and textures that seemed on paper would come out as favorites (there were lots to pick from) and that's what I present today. My only regret was that I had to sacrifice a slot (and a whole dish) to rice, which was unavoidable after tasting my main dis...