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As I need bento on Mondays and Tuesdays, the Missus has began a new pattern withrice on Mondays and home-made bread on Tuesdays. Incidentally bento is always sandwiches on Fridays when I go and teach at university.

Today’s main dish was chicken “sasami/breast fillets” she fried with ktechup, basil and what else (she would never say anything!) served with cornichons, boiled egg on a bed of chopped greens with lettuce and chikory leaves and a few plum tomatoes.
I used dressing stored in the fridge at work.

The bread she made last night waswalnuts bread.
She calls it an open-sandwich bento, but she would be surprised to find out I just break the bread and eat a piece at a time with the main dish.
As for dessert I had “mikan/mandarine oranges” from her family’s garden.

The Japan Blog List

Please check the new postings at:
sake, shochu and sushi

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Today the Missus definitely combined East and West!

She made “temari zushi”. S
The rice balls are called as such they mean “balls made by hand”. Which does not help!
The balls are smaller and round with their top covered as “nigiri”.
She steamed the rice with knobu/seaweed fro Rishiri Island (Hokkaidou). She made balls and covered them with smoked salmon topped with capers. The home-made pickles are mini-melons.

As for the salad, on a bed of finely chopped greens she put two chicory/endive leaves filled with eggs and vegetables salad, a couple of plum tomatoes and a few wedges of persimmon for dessert.

Just enough to last the day!

The Japan Blog List

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sake, shochu and sushi

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My other half said this morning: “Today I’ll make an open sandwich bento!”
“Great and thanks!” (and a wet kiss…)

Actually it turned into a bit of an extravagant “open bento”!

The “main sandwich ingredients” included a almost soft-boiled egg (impossible to eat between two slices of bread!), a lot of cress, a few fresh endive/chicory leaves containing lightly boiled crispy/crunchy mini-asparaguses, plum tomatoes, cornichons, duck confit (she took it out the freeze and fried it until the skin was crispy light brown), and fried potatoes (not French, please) she had suteed/fried in the confit fat. Now, I gave up making up sandwiches!

“Haddock in the Kitchen” might be interested to know that the Missus baked the bread yesterday.
The bread contained shredded carrots, chopped mint leaves and crumbled walnuts. I have to admit that it was a beauty. Therefore I ate it bit by bit as I consumed my bento along!

Now, I will this opportunity to introduce the dressings I usually keep in the fridge at work:
The “white” one is a Japanese Kewpie Caesar Salad Dressing (Gold Type).
The “orange” one is a Soken non-oil dressing containing green shiso, herbs and lemon.
Both are light and tasty enough and all ingredients are described on the back!

Well, this time I had plenty of dessert! (I suspect the Missus was emptying the fridge…)
Kiwi fruit, Kaki/Persimmon and Nashi/Japanese pear and asome walnut!

Alright, I know I’m spoiled!

The Japan Blog List

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sake, shochu and sushi

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Due to National Holidays falling on my usual “bento days”, it’s been some time since I could extoll the virtues of my (?) half’s bentoes (lol).
Today’s prepartions witnessed a few variations according to seasonal and unseasonal produces.

The “nigiri”/rice balls had been steamed together with tinned beans and “hijiki” seaweed, to which the Missus added a dash of shoyu before making the rice balls. As the rice was still very hot she used the “kitchen vinyl wrap” technique. Cutting a large enough piece of “Sun Wrap” (Japanese name) and holding it inside the palm of her hand, she put the proper amount of rice in the middle, close the “paper” around it and shaped it into a ball before releasing it onto a plate. The balls were later half-wrapped in shiso leaves. Incidentally I would like to thank here all the friends who left so many kind messages about the shiso posting!
In the centre she placed freshly sauteed “sasami”/chicken greast fillets on a bed of cress.
The pickles are green baby melon (home-made), tomatoes marinated in mirin (home-made) and shredded “takuan”/pickled daikon.

The “salad” consisted of a soft-boiled egg on a green leaves bed with “ameera rubbins”/the smallest sweet tomatoes in the world, exclusively grown by only two farmers in Shizuoka Prefecture.
Dessert consisted of small slices of nashi (white), or Japanese pear, and kaki (orange), a square variety of persimmon created some time ago in Shizuoka Prefecture. Nashi are almost at the end of their season whereas kaki have just apeared on the supermarket shelves.

Now did you know that persimmons contain five times as many Vitamin C in a lemon, weight for weight?