avid cook, speedy lunch packer, mom in San Francisco, & former expat fluent in Japanese.
Archive for March, 2008
Spam musubi bento lunches
I first heard of the Hawaiian classic Spam musubi when I was in college a long time ago, and I have to admit I was pretty skeptical. Come on, Spam? In sushi? Hmm… So when some of my Hawaiian friends decided to hold a proper luau here in California about seven years ago, I volunteered to make a party-sized batch of Spam musubi, almost as a joke. Funny thing, though. Once I started cooking (frying the Spam, flavoring it with homemade teriyaki sauce, putting wasabi furikake on sushi rice for some kick), it started to smell amazing and I tried some. Wow! I’ve been a convert ever since, and I’m never looking back. I’m putting the finishing touches on a recipe and tutorial, so stay tuned for that.
Contents of preschooler bento lunch: Mini spam musubi (teriyaki-sauced fried spam sushi), steamed carrots, shrimp, mushrooms and romanesco broccoli from a local farmers’ market. Romanesco is a wild, alien-looking form of broccoli with spiral florets in a fractal pattern. While it’s tender enough to eat raw, you can also cook it in dishes where you’d use broccoli or cauliflower.
Morning prep time: 14 minutes, using leftover Thai curry, frozen rice, leftover carrot that I’d steamed with rice in my rice cooker, leftover teriyaki spam and nori seaweed that I pre-cut for speed. I had made a spicy Thai curry the night before with shrimp, mushrooms and Romanesco (master recipe here), so to make it palatable for my three-year-old I plucked out the good parts and rinsed off the spicy curry sauce in a sieve, and resauced with a mild vinaigrette. (Read on for lunch details and equipment notes.)
Published by Biggie on March 11th, 2008 tagged bento, curry, food jar, for kids, lactose free, meat, onigiri or sushi | 43 Comments »
Sausage sunflower tutorial & lunch
Today we have more hot dog tricks, with little “sunflowers” made out of halved sausages and quail eggs (a step-by-step tutorial follows). I figured as long as I had all kinds of sausages and hot dogs leftover from my octodog tutorial, I might as well explore other things to do with them besides putting them in curry, kimchi fried rice or making little rabbits. You could also make these with vegetarian tofu dogs, chicken- or turkey-based sausages or hot dogs. I don’t know that these’ll make it into my daily repertoire (um, lazy, remember?), but my three-year-old did get a kick out of them. If you’re into food art, you could take this a step beyond and use other food to sculpt the whole flower and scenery, but this is about my limit. (See my new page on Decorative Food.)
Contents of preschooler lunch: Cornbread mini muffins, crab apple, hot dog sunflowers with fried quail egg (tutorial below), blueberries, cucumber slices, and cheese cubes.
Morning prep time: 10 minutes, using frozen mini muffins made with a mix. In the morning I made the hot dog sunflowers and packed the still-frozen muffins to defrost naturally in the bento lunch. (Read on for lunch details and the hot dog sunflower tutorial.)
Published by Biggie on March 9th, 2008 tagged bento, dumplings or buns, eggs, for kids, meat, recipe, tutorial or how to | 32 Comments »
Book Review: Face Food
Not well documented in English books, gorgeous Japanese kyaraben (or charaben, short for “character bentos”) are at once stimulating and intimidating, so I was really excited to check out the new food art bento book Face Food: The Visual Creativity of Japanese Bento Boxes. Author Christopher D. Salyers has even started his own Face Food Bento blog with more detail on the kyaraben artists featured in the book.
First off, let’s set expectations about what this book is, and more importantly, what it is not.
Published by Biggie on March 7th, 2008 tagged for kids, review | 12 Comments »
Kimchi fried rice lunch & recipe
Fried rice is standard “refrigerator velcro” dinner in my house, using up all sorts of leftover meats and vegetables that might otherwise be forgotten and go bad. A number of readers have asked for my recipe for kimchi fried rice, so last week I got out the scale and measuring cups and took notes on what I put into my free-form fried rice. When I make rice, I always make extra to either freeze for bento lunches or refrigerate for fried rice. Feel free to stray from the master recipe below and use whatever you have on hand; this is an easy way to get lots of vegetables into your family (not quite stealthily enough for seriously picky eaters, but deliciously at any rate).
Contents of preschooler lunch: Tangerine, blueberries, cheese cubes and kimchi fried rice with zucchini, carrots, carnitas, and cocktail sausages leftover from testing for my “octodog” (hot dog octopus) tutorial. Recipe for the fried rice follows.
Morning prep time: 5 minutes, using leftover fried rice. In the morning I warmed the rice in the microwave to restore texture, and peeled the tangerine. Very fast. (Read on for lunch details and the fried rice recipe.)
Published by Biggie on March 5th, 2008 tagged bento, for kids, lactose free, meat, recipe, rice | 31 Comments »
How to make sausage rabbits
Just a quickie today with one of the easiest decorative sausage shapes around to thrill your child. Make a rabbit head out of little cocktail sausages or hot dogs, a little faster than making “octodogs” (octopus-shaped hot dogs). I made this particular lunch quite a while back when I was dabbling in food art; read on for the how-to.