Bento for 2.11.09, breakfast thoughts, and quiche recipe!

One thing I have a tendency of doing, especially of late, is making breakfast bentos. I honestly have been making these more often than I do lunch bentos (mainly because my husband and son have been bringing me lunches he's gathered for "workday picnics"). Here, you can see some of the quick breakfast items I will make while getting ready for work.

Top tier: halved red grapes.
Bottom tier: personal pan crustless onion-mozzarella quiched (halved and stacked), 2 slices pan-fried mushroom-onion polenta (stacked).
Lid: Prenatal Multivitamin (not pregnant; breastfeeding)

Unfortunately, I didn't get pictures of the breakfast sushi rolls I made earlier this week. They consisted of a seasoned flat omlette (sliced, seasoned with a little rice vinegar, sugar, soy sauce, and salt), bread and butter pickle slices, and sushi rice wrapped in nori. Very tasty and filling!

My breakfast food choices can sometimes be described as eccentric, but I feel it's just more interesting and possibly healthier that way. There's nothing wrong with putting eggs on top of rice with some pickled veggies and eating that for your first meal. I've also been known to eat smoked fish with a side of a quick avocado-salsa mix. Honestly, I don't see why that's all that strange. :-)

So here's a quick recipe for personal sized crustless onion-mozzarella quiches.

Ingredients
4 eggs
1/2 cup heavy cream
1/2 cup milk (we used skim)
shredded mozzarella cheese
sliced onion
a couple tsps butter
cooking oil (olive oil or veggie oil)

Directions
Preheat toaster oven to 425° F.

Heat pan with butter. Toss in onion sliced and cook until somewhat soft and translucent. Set aside. Take mini pie pans and coat lightly with oil to reduce sticking. Place onions in the mini pie pans, filling them about 1/2 way. Add cheese to 1/2 remaining space (or slightly more, leave room at top of mini pan for expansion). Do not press down to pack tightly.

Beat the eggs and mix with the milk/cream. Pour over the cheese in the mini pie pans until it is just a little higher than the bulk of the cheese surface.

Place pans in toaster oven and cook until the tops start turning a light golden color (check after 5 minutes, and every 5 minutes after that... this doesn't take long). Turn down the heat to 350° F and cook another 15 to 25 minutes until done (check every 5 minutes after the first 15, but remember to keep watch as all toaster ovens are different). If toothpick is poked in the center and comes out clean without liquid filling the hole it left, than the quiche is done. Remove from toaster over, let cool slightly, remove from pan and serve (or put into bento!).

Like I said, I can make these while getting ready for work, and it only gets faster the more practice you get. Also, you can use muffin tins, which has sped up the cooking time for me in the past. I just love mini quiches!!!

Pan Fried Buttered Skate

I ate skate...

It was gooooooood!

Thursday, I bought a skate wing at Wegmans (after eyeing them up for a while), asked the fish person how to cook them, and did a quick search online for more skate cooking ideas. I finally opted to cook it my own way.

Recipe
Last night, as our late dinner, I took said skate wing, rinsed it off, patted it dry, and cut it into long slices across the muscle grain (which I don't think was necessary, but worked fine). In a large cast iron pan, I melted several (approx 4) Tbsps butter. I mixed some cornstarch, salt and pepper in a bowl and coated the skate slices before gently placing them in the pan. I turned the piece when the meat started turning opague and the bottom was a light golden brown. After the other side was browned, I removed them from the pan. (This only took a couple of minutes.) I placed them on separate plates and spooned some of the remaining butter on top. They were served with leftover our leftover Oven Roasted Green Beans and Tomatoes side dish from earlier that evening.

Review
The skate wing was tender. Very tender. Like a mix of flounder and cooked crab meat. The flavor was delicate like that of crab or lobster. It was almost disconcerting to eat something that you know *should* have a different texture and taste but doesn't (because... well... who would think a skate would taste or feel like that?!?). Some people do more to season the meat, but I wanted to get a good feel for the actual flavor. Hence why I used only butter, cornstarch, salt and pepper.Would we eat it again??? Hell yeah!!!! I'm already thinking about different stirfries to try with it!Too bad I missed when they were selling the eels... Guess I might have to make an order some time.

Oi!

Oi! Oi! Oi!

I'm sorry I haven't updated here for a while. With the holiday season in full swing, my husband starting a new job (working evenings), and the baby, I just haven't had the time to post new bentos, let alone make ones that were all that pretty or interesting. I guess I could still put up pictures of them, but I feel like they have to pass at least one criteria (not just be rice with a topping or fried rice).

Hopefully, I'll be posting more soon, at least something more meaningful than this. Thank you all for reading!

Halloween foods and bentos!

First the bento boxed lunches!

Single Tier: Sticky rice, steamed purple cauliflower "trees", snow pea "grass", nori bats, and American cheese moon. Packet of instant miso soup on the side.

Snack: Apple, two candy corn Hershey's kisses, and snack sized Snickers.

Single Tier: Four homemade smoked salmon and cream cheese "sushi" rolls (more like kimbap since there's no seasoning in the rice) with nori bats and pumpkins and cut up snow peas.
Snack: Black and white halloween dango with savory sweet sauce ("Troll oysters and Goblin blood"), blueberry daifuku, Hershey's dark chocolate snack bar.

Now for the "normal" foods!

Close ups of the Halloween Dango.

("Troll oysters with Goblin blood.")

Another close-up.

Spicy Shrimp Bokkeum over glutinous rice

("Witch Finders with Enchanted Giant Carrots")

Sauted Fennel with Lotus Seeds

Baked Fresh Beets

Seedless Watermelon carved into a brain.

(First time I ever did that... I think it turned out well.)
Close up of the Halloween sushi. :-)

Rice Buns a plenty

I've heard of rice buns for a while now, well over a year. Not buns made with rice flour, but buns made with glutinous (sticky japanese) rice. Glutinous rice does not contain gluten. It's called glutinous due to it's sticky nature. I wanted to make some, but I never got around to it for whatever reason.

Well... I finally made some.

If you ever made onigiri, the concept is very similar. The steps are as well.

To make Rice Buns: Cook glutinous rice as usual. (Methods are slightly different depending on whether you are using a rice cooker or not. There are many websites that explain how to cook rice in each instance.) Let rice cool enough that you can handle it without burning yourself. Fill a bowl halfway with water and add some salt. Stir until the salt is mostly dissolved. Take a handful of rice and press into a bun shape, making sure to apply an even, firm pressure. Basically, the same thing you would do with onigiri, except you are making a bun shape. Keep rewetting your hands with the salty water as you work or the rice will stick to your hands and become hard to manage. Heat some oil in a pan, just enough to lightly coat the pan. Add the rice buns. Gently turn the buns over after a minute or so. There should be a light crispy coating forming. **If you want to add some flavoring and color, you can brush the cooked side with some soy sauce while the other side is cooking, turn the buns over and brush the freshly cooked side with more soy sauce and finish by toasting that side again as well.

Do NOT broil the buns or try toasting them in the oven. This draws too much moisture out and makes the texture unpleasant. I have yet to try toasting them on my kitchen grill.

Rice buns are so easy and inexpensive to make. We have had them with hamburgers, egg sandwiches, tuna fish salad, peanut butter and jelly, and even cream cheese and jelly. I actually prefer these over baking or buying gluten free bread, if for no other reason than the low cost, neutral flavor, pleasant texture, and how easily I can throw them together. I plan to try flavoring them in other ways, by adding other sauces as glazing or by adding herbs. Maybe add a little food coloring to make them look more like bread buns.

They don't store incredibly well, but I've used older, cooked, unformed glutinous rice with great results. Some people freeze them until ready for use, but I have yet to do that. I usually eat them fast enough that there's no concern. ;-)

Bentos for 10.20.08 - 10.24.08

I didn't have a chance to post these last week. I was fighting a cold or something and my husband was preparing for his new job. So... Monday there was no bento, and I had instant miso soup for lunch on Wednesday.

Here's the Bentos for last week:

Tuesday Bento

Top Tier: Homemade kimchi, sugar snap peas, halved red grapes

Bottom Tier: "Go Bulgogi" kimbap with kimchi flavored furikake

Dessert (not shown): 1 dark chocolate and 1 milk chocolate with almonds snack sized Hershey bars.

Thursday Bento

Top Tier: Whole seedless red grapes, halved sugar snap peas, chocolate graveyard (chocolate pudding with chocolate "headstones")
Bottom Tier: White rice, smoked salmon, nori tree, furikake seasoning

Dessert: Dark chocolate Hershey bar, 2 candy corn Hershey kisses

Friday Bento

Top Tier: Two large and one small onigiri with minced carrot, nori faces, smoked salmon (on the small onigiri), halved snow peas
Bottom Tier: Sliced apples tossed in lemon juice, tapioca pudding

Dessert (not shown): 2 snack sized Snickers bars

Husband's "first day of work" snack bento (Friday)

Single Tier: Six small onigiri with minced carrot and kimchi

furikake, carrot slices with flowers cut out, sugar snap peas

Eye See You!

I'm going to make some fake eye balls for my mother's Halloween dinner this Sunday, for a bentos this week, and for our smaller, but scarier dinner on Halloween night.

One idea I had was using Daifuku or sweet red bean filled mochi. The red filling with the mushy sweet outside would be a wonderful treat, and I could try using food coloring to paint on details (if it works). Dango (boiled mochi balls without fillings) was another option.

The other idea I had was for a more savory treat. My husband and I made some "Go Bulgogi", as he likes to call it. Basically, you make bulgogi (korean grilled marinated beef) using ground beef instead of strips. This made it easy to stuff into Onigiri and was darned tasty. So, for the savory Zombie Eyes, we were thinking about making the "Go Bulgogi" into meat balls before cooking. Then we would wrap the cooked meatballs in the mochi dough much like the red bean paste is wrapped in the mochi dough, though I'm not sure if I would use a plain flavor or a sweet. (I think the sweet mochi casing would be a nice compliment to the savory sweet meat filling!)

Here's one sweet recipe my mother sent me. It looks good and was very different than what I was originally going to do. Enjoy!

From About.com:
http://thaifood.about.com/od/thaidesserts/r/scaryeyeballs.htm