Chicken Sesame Noodles

Another simple bento today. It is late and I'm not feeling as motivated to do something big and special as I probably should be. This is a really basic sesame noodle recipe, with thin spaghetti noodles and a sauce of peanut butter, soy sauce, and sesame oil. I cooked some chicken on the stove, marinating a bit with some teriyaki sauce, and adding in some white onion as TheBoyfriend loves onion. Once the chicken was cooked I added the noodles, mixed it all together, and stir fried for a few minutes until the sauce thickened. This was the first time I had tried this recipe and I was a little worried about how it would taste, but it turned out really tasty. We ate a bunch of it at the stove before I even got it in the bento box.

Gyoza and Rice

This was a pretty simple bento. I actually made fried rice and gyoza for dinner Friday night, and put leftovers in the bento for Saturday.



On one side there is plain white rice. I added it in before using the rest for fried rice, which is on the other side of the box. I don't have a specific recipe for fried rice as I've made it so many times I can pretty much do it without thinking.

For this batch, I've got long grain white rice, scrambled egg, green onion, canned chicken, and frozen mixed veggis. The veggis were a "stir fry" mix, including broccoli, onions, carrots, snap peas, and little noodles. I also used soy sauce and mirin for seasoning - two parts soy sauce to one part mirin (usually two tablespoons soy sauce and one of mirin, unless I make too much rice and need extra flavoring).

The gyoza are a little more complicated. Even though I've made them about a dozen times now, I can't remember the exact ingredients without looking at a recipe. The recipe actually calls for ground pork but I use ground turkey, along with green onions, ginger, sugar, soy sauce, sesame oil, and garlic salt. I tend to skip the cabbage, mainly because it is hard to buy only a small amount at a time and if I can't come up with something else cabbage-y to make right away the unused portion goes bad. I mix the ingredients together and then put small amounts into gyoza wrappers and fold them up. This part takes a long time but is easier than I thought it would be (I watched a video online to learn the proper way to seal the wrappers). The gyoza are fried until the bottoms are just browned, and then water is added to the pan and they are steamed until finished cooking. Most of the time they come out pretty well, though on occasion the bottoms have been burnt because I fried them too long or wasn't paying close enough attention.

This isn't a particularly fancy bento, but the food is filling and good and stuff I know how to make so it is a good start for getting back into the hobby. I'll try making something a little more complicated next time ... maybe.

Hello Again

I started this blog a million years ago (at least it seems that way) and obviously never got very far with it. As I'm in a blogging mood and eager to try/start new things, I will be picking up where I left off with it. I'm going to leave the initial posts up because it amuses me and will be adding to it starting within the next few days. So see you soon!

Philadelphia Rolls

Last Friday was sushi night at my house, and I tried out several new recipes for myself and the boyfriend. These included the Godzilla Roll, Philadelphia Roll, and a different form of the California Roll than I had previously tried. I also experimented with making inside-out sushi rolls, with varying results.

As I'm not very good at judging amounts quite yet, I made way too much sushi rice and so had a whole bowl of it left over. So it wouldn't go to waste I decided to utilize what I had for Bento on Monday. The boyfriend never seems to get enough sushi, anyways, so he certainly wasn't complaining.

For Monday's Bento, I did a modified Philadelphia Roll, using the original recipe I had found plus adding in hot sauce to give it a spicy kick (my boyfriend is a spicy food NUT) and making a few other modifications because that is just what I do. :) I also rolled one with the nori on the outside, and tried the second as an inside-out roll. I'm not terribly good at inside-out rolls yet, but I'm working on it.

Philidelphia Roll Recipe:
3 sheets nori
1.5 cups sushi rice
2 oz salmon (I got the pre-cooked, already shredded (like tuna) stuff in a pouch)
2 oz cream cheese (I use the softened stuff that comes in a tub)
green onions
hot sauce

a) Cut the green onion into pieces about two inches long and about 1/4 inch wide.
b) Lay the nori shiny side down on the rolling mat with the long side toward you, then put rice down on the nori, leaving a border of about 1 inch on the ends.
c) Put the salmon and green onions down the center of the rice. Spread cream cheese on the rice down the length of the other fillings.
d) Roll the sushi.
e) I serve with a dollop of wasabi and some soy sauce.

I found that the rolls cut really easily because the rice had been in the refrigerator and was very cold and firm. It was hard to taste-test, however, as it had a weird consistency in my mouth until I had let it warm on the counter for about 1/2 an hour.