Eating in a box

I've always been fascinated by fermentation, the idea of little critters that toil away and magically transform food from one form to something else is somehow magical to me. How did ancient man decide curdled milk could be made into cheese and then later yet the moldy blue cheese is edible and delicous? Or that bubbly fruit juice that sat in a jug a bit too long was worth drinking even if it made you feel a bit dizzy and good? I know a lot of it was a preservation technique but if you were the first to opened up a jar of kimchi or sauerkraut would you think to take a big bite of it? I've dabbled in various experiment, some successful, some less successful. But I happened to have a whole head of napa cabbage in my fridge and was pondering what to do with it. I floated the idea of turning it into kimchi with my wife and she was quite eager for me to give it a try. Now if you don't know what kimchi is (I'm not sure what rock you've been hiding under) it's a ...

As always it's been crazy and getting time to cook has not really happened for me. I'm just glad I've had two posts in a row about food I've cooked even if there's been a long break. It's been a while since I've done a Japanese traditional bento and I figure why not. Most everything I cooked was from a blog that helped inspire me when I first got started on this blog,  Just Bento  and sister blog Just Hungry . She's got a lot of wonderful recipes and even produced a book. Lots of great tips that I've followed (even applying to non Japanese foods). I've posted links to the recipes. For the main dish I made Chicken Nanban . I used chicken thigh meat and went with using my fryer since I had so much chicken to make. The original recipe called for pan frying, I'm not sure if using the fryer was actually worse or better in terms how healthy the dish is. Immediately after frying you cool the chicken in the Nanban sauce, which is a sweet,...

Today's bento is actually a bento for one. My girlfriend wanted to do a lunch exchange with a co-worker who's Indian. Great! A cultural exchange, and this sounded like a fairly straight forward box to plan out but as my girlfriend and I starting going thru dishes and ideas it started to get harder and harder. Apparently if you remove meat, seafood (some folks make that exemption), and eggs (same) it gets kinda hard. Always the favorite is the ketchup fried rice. Problem is fried rice usually involves some sort of meat and egg. So I simply skipped the meaty items. On our trip to the Chinese grocery store we found some vegetarian "ham". The stuff stilled tasted like soy protein but at least it gave some additional texture for the dish so I went with it. I've had some vegetarian duck that was pretty darn close and was very very tasty. So, I'm gonna go on a tangent here. Given folks are vegetarian there seems to be a huge amount of products that mimic the look and...

As usual, I have to bow my head in shame for such a late post. This bento was produced last week, but as has been the usual mantra lately work and life obligations have kept me from making lunch for my eaters. I'm helping out with a friends wedding and another party so I'm still busy in the kitchen, just not doing anything exciting enough that I feel the need to take pictures and talk about it. Sadly, I was in a giant hurry to make lunch for this bento. I felt so bad about not getting to cook for such a while but I still had such a crunch on time that I couldn't really devote myself to a long planned out lunch. I picked a menu that I knew I could execute quickly and still keep light and healthy. Asian cuisine is good for the quick and healthy constraints and of course Thai is a favorite amongst my diners. In fact when I shouted over the cube walls, "hey I need a theme" there were quite a few chirps of "Thai, curry, Indian" seems like my audience had an A...

Sorry about the sparce posts, been dealing with some emergencies here at home. I managed to dig out some time and come up with a Korean inspired bento. This one's been on my list to do for quite some time. I'm not sure why I never got around to building a menu, better late than never I suppose. This box is gluten free box, even though we've reverted back to a normal diet. Ok on with the show. I really enjoy korean food, I think because of all the little side dishes and pickles they serve you, so no korean themed bento could be complete without a bevy of side dishes. Starting from the left we have Sook Ju Namool, its a lightly seasoned bean sprout dish served cold. The bean sprouts were quickly blanched and a bit of salt, garlic and sesame oil are added. Next we have Oi Muchim, or spicy cucumber salad. The process for this and the next dish is a light quick pickling. I managed to get my hands on some korean cucumbers (thank you farmers market) very different from regular...