Eating in a box

As usual it's been a busy work season, but that really hasn't prevented me from cooking. In fact I've been doing a lot of cooking over the last few months and I have a pretty big backlog of posts to put up, just no time to post. We've been doing a lot of paleo cooking, it's had modest results on the waistline but done wonders in terms of saving money. Living in a big city it's often easier to walk down the street to grab some food than to buy a ton of groceries and prepare it yourself (especially after a long day at work). I try my best to do a lot of cooking over the weekend but there's only so much leftover I can take. First world problems, I know. Anyways, I saw this Slow cooker Korean Grass fed short rib from Nom Nom paleo (they modded it from America's Test Kitchen), and as you know I'm a big fan of using the slow cooker so I wasn't going to pass it up.  I couldn't get grass fed beef or some of the paleo friendly sauces but I wa...

Many people ask what the most important cooking gadget I have in my arsenal. Most of the time I'll reply, my Chinese cleaver, as a universal tool used pretty much every time I work in the kitchen it is in fact my most important tool. But if we're talking about actual cooking device/gadget I have to say my slow cooker. I've talked a lot about it in the past and even labeled my them "Slo-mo bentos". It's a magical device that's great for all sorts of applications and you can't have enough of them (I personally have four back home). So it's no surprise that the very first thing I purchased when I landed in Australia is a slow cooker. I was torn a bit, I like the simple off-low-high low tech version (great for a sous vide water bath when paired with a pid controller), but I opted for this multi function baby that has a removable non-stick insert that allows you to brown in the pot without taking up stove space. What to make? Pulled pork obv...

Today's bento theme is: Roasting. The application of dry heat to meat and vegetables to prepare a dish. A lot of the time, roasting is associated with low heat longer cooking but it's not limited to low and slow, sometimes you can apply the technique in a high temperature setting (usually on tender cuts of meat). But for the most part low and slow gets you a lot of flavor without having to stand and watch over a dish. In vegetables you get the sugars to caramelize, root vegetables get nice and tender. For tough or large cuts of meat it gives it time to break down collagen and connective tissue so it becomes "fall apart" tender. The key is retaining moisture. A lot of time you either sear (in the case of meat) or slather in fat or oil to help in that process. In this case, I did neither....  This recipe came from listening to NPR on my commute home, it was a "copy cat/fast food fakeout" recipe for a roasted chicken. The idea seemed sound, you put on a d...

I'm constantly amazed by the humble Slow cooker/crock-pot. Fire and forget, it's the savior to many households in the US for busy families trying to make a good meal after a hard day at work/school. Not just that, it's special power of slow low temperature cooking yields the most amazing results when it comes to tender meats. All of that comes in an varieties from dirt cheap to expensive and simple one knob Low/Hi/Off to fancy settings, timer controls and temperature control. You can't walk into a second hand store without seeing several of these lying around, it's just that common. A very noble intro, I actually used this bento as an excuse to acquire a 4th slow cooker. (I'll post more on the new toy later) The crock pot is magic when it comes to pulled pork. I've done various versions of this in the past but ran across the idea of a coffee/espresso based dry rub from a couple of sources. I cobbled together my version of this rub. Since I was working wit...

I know, I just did a SloMo theme not too long ago . I like the fire and forget nature of the slow cooker and I had plenty of dishes I wanted to try out from last time that I really had to come back and re-visit using my multiple crockpots. There's a good reason why a lot of busy parents rely on the crockpot to serve dinner. I mean who hates putting in a bunch of stuff and setting it cooking right when you leave for work and have it all ready for you by the time you come home. (well that's the dream anyway) I find practically speaking if you factor in transit time even six to nine hour cook times you will find yourself rushing home to turn it off. (perhaps it will hold that extra hour or two, sounds like a future experiment) Anyhow it's still got the no fuss, no muss factor working in it's favor, and newer models let you set on and off times. If you pair all that with my sous vide rigs you could probably setup for a large dinner party and just worry about plating when yo...

So this is a special milestone bento it's number 100! That's right, I've managed to churn out 100 of these babies. Looking back it doesn't feel like I've already been at this for nearly four years. This year has been a slower start for bento production but I'm pretty happy with my work/life/bento balance, sometimes it's not so easy to be inspired to cook up lunch other times my bentos are a refuge from the daily stress of life and work. Enough nostalgia! What did I come up with you ask? Well for this bento I decided to go with a fully Sous Vide bento, meaning everything in the box was prepared sous vide. I recently ordered a series of books from the good people at Sous Vide Supreme . I went with this as my theme for a couple of reasons but mainly to experiment with non-meat dishes. Don't get me wrong I love the meat that the sous vide cooking process produces. The end product is always amazing and if any of you ask, yes both rigs (the commercial version...

It's getting to be that time of year, holiday season. Which means a bit of a slow down on the bentos since there are a ton of things happening around family and friends. As usual I'll post up what I get and any neat food related things I run into. Anyhow, with all this work and experimentation with my new sous vide contraptions and trying out various temperatures to perfect my cooking debut , I got this idea to make a bento where the theme would be all slow cooked/Sous vide prepared items: Slow Mo if you will. It played out great in my head, I'll just throw a bunch of stuff in my two crockpots, vacuum up a few pouches and all I'd do is wait for magic to happen. I'll have a free day to do anything I want! Didn't quite work out that way. Yes, everything took hours to cook but I was chained to the house since everything had different timings and if I wanted to make sure everything popped out at roughly the same time all of it had to be prepared in stages. Anyhow on...

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,...

So once upon a time, many years ago I asked a friend for a food challenge. I was in the full swing of my life goal of cooking as many cuisines from appetizer to dessert to learn as much as I can about food. Austin, at the time was still more of a college town and food had not exploded to be what it is today. My friend said, "fine Ethiopian food" my response, "well that's not fair, we don't even have an Ethiopian restaurant for me to try the cuisine." him, "you asked for a challenge, and my favorite place in Houston is an Ethiopian restaurant". I wasn't really willing to drive out to Houston so I set to the web. I studied countless recipes and poured over every description I could find and created the tastes in my head. Did I pass? An enthusiastic yes. This turns out to be my favorite cuisine to cook, and I think it was because of the surprise complexity of the cuisine as well as the amount of research I had to do to get there. Anyway, I'm v...

Yes, I'm posting a bento solely around the entree, I've been wanting to work with short ribs for some time and my recent purchase of a nice dutch oven pushed me into action. The rest of the items in the bento really were, "what can I put in with short ribs?" so there's no real point in trying to fabricate a theme. This bento did include yet another coworker from my work, he's been standing in line asking when I'd bring the bento goodness to our work. I'll admit I was a little intimidated to cook for him, he's very well traveled, well knowledged about food, and has eaten at some of the best places, and has a brother that's a chef. I cringed as I put the bento in the fridge this morning. Hopefully it is to his liking. Ok let's just lead off with the entree. Short ribs, it's one of those things that if I see it in a menu there's going to be about a 95% chance it'll be what I'm having for dinner/lunch/breakfast whatever. Why th...