You can fight the sleep but not the dream

[venta]

I did promise that I wouldn't post about my dinner much any more. However, here is a bento from a week or two ago that I made to fulfill a promise to huskyteer...

I've been pottering along happily with my bento boxes, grabbing frozen rice to defrost each morning. Then suddenly one evening I thought, right tomorrow I'll have... er... oh. No, I won't. No rice.

Can I be bothered to cook rice from scratch in the morning? Er... probably not. If you're doing Japanese-style rice properly, it takes bloody ages. Hmm. Maybe tomorrow is a day for going to the work canteen.

Or... Hmm. I formed a plan, got a bit of smoked haddock out of the freezer to thaw, and went to bed.

The following morning I got up, washed a handful of basmati rice and threw it on to boil with turmeric. I rubbed the bit of fish with garam masala and powdered ginger, wrapped it in foil and popped it in the oven to bake. I stuck an egg on to boil. I chopped a piece of a portable mushroom up finely, and some spring onions.

And, er, I poached some celery in wine, which wasn't really very on-message but celery was the only thing I had on hand remote resembling a green vegetable. Spinach would have been a better bet.

The result... the deconstructed kedgeree bento:



As you can see, my ability to take in-focus pictures first thing in the morning hasn't improved.

It was moderately successful as a lunchbox. The rice - despite being alledgedly flavoured with turmeric, and having onion and mushroom mixed through it - was a little bland. I know the turmeric-flavouring works well for something you're going to eat hot, but it doesn't stand up well to being eaten cold.

Suggestions for improvement are welcome, though with a prep. time of nearly forty minutes this one ain't happening often.

Comments

[sea-of-flame.livejournal.com]

If once you've done the initial 'bash', you roll the egg wth careful pressure between palm & work top, it continues the disintegration around from the initial bash site - then when you get hold of the membrane, the shell peels away smoothly because it's in crazed shards attached to the membrane, rather than big bits that try to slash into the egg on departure.

You need to make that initial wallop first though - trying to get the eggshell to crack by pressing a structurally sound egg between palm & worktop may lead to exploded egg and/or shards of eggshell stickin in your hand.

This is one of those things like peeling a potato - simple & intuitive until you have to write it down rarer than just doing it...


(If you can bear the faff, quail eggs make an amazing kedgeree)

[venta.livejournal.com]

I love quail eggs, but have never felt I could bear the faff.

The Hollybush pub in Hampstead sells (as a bar snack) hard-boiled quail eggs and smoked salt. They really are fabulous, but the eggs arrive shell-on and I always end up thinking that, pretty as they are, I'd really rather someone else did the peeling for me.