I had no illusions that I'd ever find a glimpse of summer's heatwaves in your eyes

[venta]

Last week, I was browsing for a link online to the scary Japanese egg-moulds that some people think are an essential ingredient of bento boxes. As a side-effect, I found the rather wonderful website, Just Bento which is run by a Japanese lady living in Switzerland, and provides masses of information about making bento boxes.

Bento, as the website helpfully explains, is just a Japanese word for any meal served in a box. In British Japanese restaurants, a bento box is a full meal served in a lacquered, multi-section box, which is how I usually understand the term. However, it seems that the rather simpler approach is the sort of boxed lunch that I'm led to believe is the standard Japanese packed lunch.

Anyway, I pottered around the Just Bento website, and got quite excited and decided that I quite fancied making myself bento boxes for lunch. The major disadvantage of this, as Just Bento Lady points out, is that you have to get out of bed a bit earlier to actually assemble the thing. I am not good at getting out of bed.

Reading the website, I very nearly succumbed to a creeping evil I call new-hobby disorder. Ooh, I thought, I could make a trip to the nice Japanese shop in West Acton and buy various ingredients, and I could order a pretty bento box online that'll be the right shape to fit in my bag...

Oy, I said. Stop it, I said. See if you can manage the getting up of the morning and actually doing it part first, then start purchasing the glamorous accessories. Accordingly, my bento boxes this week will be presented in those cheap, white plastic containers that take-away meals arrive in.

So, yesterday morning I bounced out of bed (aided by being actually quite excited at the prospect of assembling my exciting new lunch). On Saturday I'd bought a piece of salmon and made some salted salmon, and I made up a batch of pepper and onion confit. I'd also cooked a batch of rice and frozen it in portions as recommended by Bento Lady. Yesterday morning, I nuked the frozen rice and squashed it into one end of a box. I cooked a piece of the salmon, dolloped out a portion of vegetable confit and made a little Japanese omelette (tamagoyaki). The omelette had been a bit daunting, as I don't have a proper tamagoyaki pan (or indeed a small normal frying pan), but at the last minute I found a cheaty one-egg one-person-sized tamagoyaki method that used a normal frying pan.

I shoehorned everything into the box, realised there was an odd-shaped space left, so steamed some broccoli florets to fill the gap (where by steamed I do mean nuked in a mug in the microwave :)

I was quite proud of the resulting box:



It survived the trip to work without suffering mishap, damage or becoming disarrayed. It was pretty good, though it was a first attempt and I feel it could be improved. I'd massively over-salted the salmon, for example, and found it a bit too much.

The rice was also a little hard and dry. Which is what I expect from frozen rice, but I'd been won over by Bento Lady's assurances that if you wrap it up in cling film while still warm, cool it, then freeze it it'll be ok. It was indeed "ok", but no better; I'll try again with a shorter-grain rice as I believe they freeze better (if you can't tell from the pic, that's brown rice).

The omelette was bloody marvellous, though :)

Yesterday morning, it did take me quite some time to put my box together: around 35 minutes. However most of that was unfamiliarity: can I just put this cling-film wrapped portion of rice straight in the microwave? Will it explode if I don't puncture the cling film? (The answers, by the way, are yes and no, respectively). I had to keep consulting recipes and instructions, and I also faffed around chopping up, wrapping and freezing the rest of the salted salmon. I am optimistic that this time can be improved on.

I'm not put off the idea yet. Watch this space for further boxes and the debate of various philosophical lunch-related points...

Comments

[feanelwa.livejournal.com]

How can you eat such a tiny little lunch? Did you have a spare one as well?

[venta.livejournal.com]

Er... I didn't think it was tiny! It seemed like plenty of food (and I was expecting to have a main meal in the evening). Everything is quite densely packed (there's about a cup measure of brown rice in there, for example, which I find pretty filling, and the piece of salmon is bigger-salmon-shrunk-down on account of the salting, so is denser than expected).

I think of myself (in general) as someone who's quite a big eater, so I'm slightly alarmed to have the magnitude of my lunch called into question :)

Also I'm not doing the big exercise things that you're doing, like canoeing, so maybe I need less food?

[bateleur.livejournal.com]

Looks about the same size as my typical lunch, certainly.

[feanelwa.livejournal.com]

Ah, of course. I mainly eat sandwiches which are less dense on account of bread being full of bubbles :)

[venta.livejournal.com]

Blame it on the bubbles :)

I actually find sandwiches really unpredictably filling. I guess it depends perfectly logically on type of bread, type of filling, etc, but I don't appear in practice to be able to work it out. The usual result is that my sandwich lunches are not quite big enough (or, occasionally, too big, but mostly too small).

[feanelwa.livejournal.com]

I find triangular ones more filling than square ones even though they are exactly the same amount of bread. I suspect it's to do with getting two mouthfuls per sandwich that are entirely crust and no filling, while with square ones at least you have a right angle to chase a little bit of ham into.

[venta.livejournal.com]

Interesting :) Assuming one's bread is (very) approximately square, I always cut my sandwiches into only two rectangles, because that's much more filling than four squares (or triangles). Something about little tiny sandwiches makes me feel like I'm not getting a proper meal.

(Though logically, I guess I should be more full after four squares, because I'd probably eat them more slowly.)

[feanelwa.livejournal.com]

I don't cut it at all and just eat the big square :) nomnomnom

[venta.livejournal.com]

That's just crazy talk!

[undyingking.livejournal.com]

Mm, I'm exactly the opposite, I always cut into four pieces to make it seem like more sandwich.

[venta.livejournal.com]

An interesting fact (which may not be true): Bento Lady reckons that, assuming you're following her approximate guidelines for carbs:protein:vegetables ratio then the calorie content of one's lunch is approximately the same as the capacity of the box in millilitres. (Obviously depends wildly on what you put in the box :)

Which means mine is about 600, although I'm not convinced that I'm really following her guidelines anyway.

(It's worth noting that the "traditional" ratio above is alledgedly 4:2:1, which is very much not what Bento Lady is aiming for because apparently she's trying to lose weight. I'm not entirely sure what ratio mine was yesterday.)

[skorpionuk.livejournal.com]

Also bear in mind that this refers to bento boxes that are _stuffed_ to the lid, especially the rice portion.

In my experience, it is about a meal's worth thanks to the rice, yep. Hmmm maybe I should restart bentos too... d'you think it's cheating if I have them at home?

[venta.livejournal.com]

Well, my intention is to stuff to the lid (if only to prevent the contents shifting about in transit), but practicalities have got in the way. If you're going to stuff, you need to get the quantities spot on (or, I suppose, make sure that every day you have enough of something that you can stuff until full and keep the leftovers).

Also... it's actually just more difficult than expected! Even getting the damn rice packed into the box at one end has been quite a challenge of dexterity for me. Every time you think you've got it sorted, a bulge develops somewhere else. I guess it might be easier with proper sushi rice rather than brown longrain, though!

d'you think it's cheating if I have them at home?

No! (http://www.justbento.com/why-make-bento-lunch-if-you-work-home) :)