Eating in a box

It’s been a busy season, holidays are a little different in Australia. Since they don’t have Thanksgiving  their holiday season starts near Christmas and stretches thru to Australia Day on the 26th of January. I have been cooking but just no time to post anything so I’ve got a huge backlog of posts to put up. Ah, so many bento boxes to choose from which one to post?  I found inspiration in a shrimp with red pepper garlic pasta dish, no sauce just tossing in fresh ingredients infusing the oil along the way. I substituted zucchini noodles for pasta to save on the carbs and get more veggies into diet and since my wife isn't big pepper I decided on capers and lemon.  Five ingredient and a one skillet meal you can’t ask for a simpler recipe. 500 grams (about one pound) of Tiger prawn (they call shrimp prawns here) which I shelled and cleaned (you could use the shells for a stock). Four Zucchinis, a couple of tablespoons of capers, 1/2 cup of parmesan chee...

Work and life have conspired to rob me of my time to cook and blog. Boooooooo. Well I'm finally done with weekend commitments and work travel so I found a moment to put together a bento. I got a request to do Korean food. I've done Korean as a theme in the past and a couple of the dishes are a repeat. Considering there's five items I was very surprised that I was in and out of the kitchen (yes dishes in the dishwasher) in three hours. Not too bad when serving for people. Don't let simple preparations fool you the dishes packed a lot of flavor. I got a few "best bento yet" comments so I guess I am on the right track. I picked up some Tamari sauce so this box is indeed gluten free. Everyone was surprised I didn't do a Bulgogi. Two reasons I didn't: I did it before, and it was the first thing that popped into my head meaning it was too common and predictable. I like to explore new things so I found a nice bbq shrimp: See Woo Gui. The original recipe call...

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...

So short post today, it's been tough with all the travel to make food for my folks. The one good thing about travel is that I take the time to catch up on my food magazines and try to get some inspiration for my bentos. For today's creation I found a magazine that focused on recipe makeovers, or taking stuff that tastes great but is bad for you and turning them into something healthy. I took the challenge a bit further and tried pairing together recipes so that I could make even further cuts in the calories and fat department. Without further ado Lunch time! I start us off with a Kung Pao style chicken breast. The authors used chicken breast instead of the usually cheaper chicken thighs and went with a lighter version of sauce. Not much variation for me here. I like that they substituted fat with a lot of flavor in the form of a more fragrant and sauce thanks to the sesame oil and heavy dose of ginger. Instead of going with the traditional rice as a starch, I picked up this rec...

So I hosted what I dubbed a "Sous Vide Summit" at my house this weekend. What does that mean? It means getting a bunch of foodies interested in Sous Vide method of cooking, the result is a meat-a-thon of unbelievably tasty treats. I had a great time and am very glad to finally be back in the swing of having dinner parties. Although a bit of work prepping and cleaning, the fun with friends new and old is always a blast. Lots of pictures to share today so hang on to your hats for what probably will be a long winded post. So to start, my own contribution to this shin dig was possibly the easiest (not that seasoning, vacuum sealing food, and dumping the package into perfectly controlled water is hard by any means) my experiment was to show case various grades and cuts of steak each cooked at the magical perfect 134 degrees Fahrenheit or better known as Medium Rare. If you click in you can see the steaks raw side by side, we have from left to right, three rib eye steaks USDA Prim...

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...