Bento #362

Tamagoyaki, vegetarian dumplings, avocado, carrot sticks and broccoli on rice. And a chocolate for dessert!

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Summer Soba

Cold Soba (Buckwheat noodles) are a traditional Japanese summer dish. I replaced the traditional soy-and-vinegar dipping sauce with a sesame sauce I tried last year in Singapore though, and added a bunch of fresh vegetables to be dipped alongside the noodles.

For the sauce I used Tahini, which is basically just ground sesame seeds, as a base. It’s not technically Japanese but it makes working with the sauce a lot easier.

Sesame dipping sauce
2-3tsp Tahini
½tsp soy sauce
½tsp rice wine vinegar
½-1tsp grated ginger (I love ginger so I added a lot – it’s not necessary though)
2Tsp. water (I used the water from boiling the soba for flavour)
Optional: Some ground chili or Szechuan pepper.
Mix ingredients thoroughly, serve chilled.

Serve with soba, chopped spring onions, and whatever other veggies you like. I had tofu, sliced radishes, sliced sugar snaps and some wakame salad on the side. Yum!

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Bentos #353 and #354

Swedish weather and general stress levels have had a serious impact on my bento mojo recently. When even my coworkers started to complain that they hadn’t seen any pretty, happy lunchboxes in a while I knew it was time to make some again.
Brown rice with the last of this season’s cherry tomatoes (we cut them down now and will be replanting as soon as we get reliable periods of sunlight again), cucumber, carrots, avocado, tamagoyaki and soy sauce. My box also has some quick-pickled zucchini which the BF didn’t like as much.

A small box I made sometime before Christmas already, but forgot to post.
Mushroom risotto with cherry tomatoes and herbs as decoration, white bell pepoers, more tomatoes and some chili cheese wedges in the small box.

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Japanese Eggplant Carbonara

I did not get a picture of my favourite dish from the restaurant in my previous post. But that does not mean that I did not vow to recreate the mix of flavours at my earliest convenience!
The original dish was with fish roe, but I decided to replace it with eggplant for a more vegetarian twist on it. It worked pretty well, although I might try pureeing the eggplant next time instead of frying it up. (I know there’s vegetarian roe… er… but no. There’s no point in even buying that.)

“Japanese Carbonara” with eggplant
(2 portions)
Spaghetti enough for 2 people (depending on your preferred portion size)
1/8l cream
2 egg yolks
1/3-1/2 eggplant (depending on the size of your eggplant)
A small piece of leek or a spring onion, very thinly sliced
Nori, cut into thin strips (I used egg furikake with nori)
(optional) Parsley for decoration

Slice the eggplant and salt it, set to drain for at least 15 minutes.
Pat dry and cut into small pieces, fry with a little salt in neutral oil. (You could use smoked salt to add a little smokyness, I used a few crumbs of smoked chili instead for some extra zing!)
At this point you can also start boiling the pasta al dente in a big pot of salted water.
When the pasta and the eggplant are done (this should ideally coincide in time), drain the pasta, toss it with the cream and arrange on two plates. Arrange the eggplant, leek/spring onion, parsley and egg yolks on top. Sprinkle over the nori and done!

Eat with chopsticks if you can, stirring in the yolk at the table.

I’m submitting this to Presto Pasta Nights hosted this week on The Life & Loves of Grumpy’s Honey Bunch.

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Bento #334

Rice, avocado, tamagoyaki and cut up inari skins as a sort of veggie chirashizushi. Carrots and black sesame seeds as decoration, soy and wasabi to dip.

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Bentos #313 and #314

Veggie maki rolls with cucumber, leek, wasabi, mayo and carrot, bottle of soy sauce, inarizushi, Tamagoyaki and more cucumber. Some dried fruit is tucked in the corner for dessert under the carrot flower decoration.

And the one from Friday, which wasn’t so interesting…
Pumpkin cream soup in the thermos jar. Bread and veggie sticks, apple bunnies and some dried fruit in the extra container.

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Bento #311

Something simple with traditional bento-staples to get back into the groove. Inarizushi, apple bunnies, and carrot flowers on lettuce in the background, tamagoyaki, cherry tomatoes, a soy bottle and some pastry stuffed with ricotta and pumpkin (from my freezer stash) in the foreground.

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Bento #307

Very simple – veggie maki rolls (cucumber, avocado, leek and mayo) and inarizushi left over from dinner, and a soy fishy.

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Bento #286 – Tux

This weeks Bento Challenge is “Penguins”!
I am a geek, so I had no choice.

Tux is an onigiri stuffed with tuna (since any good penguin wants to be stuffed with fish!). The details are nori and rice coloured with turmeric.
Then there’s cherry tomatoes, avocado (with a SuSE chameleon hiding on it), pieces of mini quiche, soy sauce fishy bottle, celery, olives and a Toblerone chocolate.

This is my own box, which is slightly smaller. I made this one first, and learned from my mistakes – hence why I like the BF’s better :)
If you’re wondering how on Earth I’m gonna close that one – I lost the lid to it a while ago, so I don’t have to worry about that <.<; I'm putting another box on top and tying it together with a napkin.
The BF's closed fine, though.

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Bento #280

Small box: Rice with sesame and a cherry tomato.
Big box: Abura-age (fried tofu), celery, cherry tomatoes, mangold with soy sauce, pickled chiles and cucumbers and tamagoyaki slices.

BF’s bento has the same, just in a bigger box.
And before anyone asks: He doesn’t mind the box being pink. Or the food being cute.

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