Main | February 2008 »

t's raining today, again. I made some last-minute plans to take advantage of San Francisco's Dine About Town, but I had plenty of time to kill until then so I decided to whip up a batch of cornbread.

Cornbread is so easy (and not even from a mix, though the TJ's mix is pretty darned good if you go that route) it's a wonder I don't make it more often. I usually have all the ingredients on hand too: corn meal (a must for pizza making), flour, milk, an egg, baking powder, sugar, and salt. I made them in cupcake molds instead of in a square pan, because really, what isn't improved by being baked in an individual muffin cup?

I put half in paper cups and the other half in silicone baking cups, since I plan to freeze them for lunches and figured they would hold up better through the defrosting process. Now I just need to make some chili.

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ere is M.'s bento all boxed up and ready to go. I didn't show the inside because I had a bad bento morning. I started out thinking I would cook a sweet potato in the microwave to include, but forgot how awful the texture is when you do that until after it was done. On to the butternut squash, which I cubed successfully (thanks to a diagram in Bon Appetit showing how to peel it safely) but then overcooked into mush. To top it all off, it is packed far too loosely because I needed a box sized in between what I actually had.

Ah, well. It has candy inside so I know M. will like that. Hope I have better luck next time!

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ately I've had a craving that only one thing can satisfy, and even at that it's temporary until I get hungry for it again: the breakfast sandwich. How marvelous and delectable! How filling and tasty! My cast iron skillet has been working overtime crisping the turkey bacon and cooking the eggs and potatoes, but it's been getting nicely seasoned in the process.

I've also been enjoying variations on an english muffin, wrapped in a tortilla, scrambled eggs vs. fried, spicy potatoes or no potatoes, and (watch me now!) with avocado. I'm waiting to get tired of it but it hasn't happened yet.

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his isn't really the kind of bento I would get excited about for myself, but M. seemed to like it - we have very different taste in food.

Radishes with sea salt packet, leftover tofu stir-fry with rice, carrot sticks, and seaweed crackers.

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fter our Japantown foray I've been gearing up to make sushi since I have all the basic supplies. I also discovered that our local grocery carries sushi rice in the bulk section for waaay cheaper than the packaged bags. So after watching a couple YouTube videos and checking out some blogs for tips, I used some down time on this rainy Monday afternoon to try it out.

The verdict? Amazingly simple, much more so than I thought. My research definitely helped, but it took way less time and anguish than I thought it would. I predicted problems with the rolls not sticking together, but they rolled right on up. This isn't something I would have attempted for the first time during the morning lunch-making rush (especially before my coffee has fully kicked in) but now I know about how much time it takes, and it would be easy to whip up a roll for M.'s bento here and there with a little pre-planning.

The amount pictured is made from one avocado and 1 cup raw sushi rice, which made enough for three rolls. It actually made a few more pieces but I ate the ugly end ones before taking the photo - I need to add a little more rice at the edges next time so the end pieces are full.

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made a special bento request yesterday, and I was happy to oblige as it gave me a chance to use some of my new bento gear. He was going to join some friends for a post-dinner D&D game (don't ask) and needed some repast for his primary meal: the late night snack.

I should have taken a picture of it all closed up, because it was truly adorable - I used a red lacquer box secured with a decorative elastic band, with an artfully folded paper napkin and a chopstick case tucked inside. The whole thing went into a cloth bento bag. I'll get the finished product next time.

Pictured in this bento: gingersnaps, curried rice in coconut milk with cashews, avocado half, hard-boiled egg (you can't tell but I used a fish-shaped egg mold) with salt and pepper packet, and curried skillet potatoes. I filled the gaps with extra cashews and apple chunks. M. confessed that he's pickier about food touching than I first assumed, so I employed some plastic wrap for flavor sanitation.

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e had some company over Friday night for a simple dinner and some game playing, though one of our guests only joined us for the latter. While we were waiting for her to arrive I decided to whip up some gingersnaps that I'd been meaning to make for awhile, but hadn't gotten around to yet. It was an exuberant affair involving explosions of flour and cascades of sticky molasses, but in the end we decimated a couple batches of warm, spicy cookies.

Note that I didn't actually use fresh ginger for this recipe, I was just feeling artsy. The key ingredient (besides the ginger) turned out to be some more of the candied orange peel that's been kicking around my fridge. Chopped up and added to the batter, the sweet orange essence flavor is an interesting contrast to the spices.

If you want the recipe I can't recommend David Lebovitz's Room for Dessert highly enough - it's in my little Amazon store thingy on the right there, though please feel free to buy it from wherever you like if you decide to get it. The candied orange peel instructions are in there as well.

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esterday I finally got a chance to head over to Japantown in San Francisco and investigate what turned out to be the Holy Grail of local bento supplies: Ichiban-Kan (their adorable slogan is "Different things!"). Eyes bulging out of my sockets, I gleefully roamed the aisles tossing all manner of lacquered boxes, hard-boiled egg molds, miniature sauce containers, chopsticks with matching cases, rice molds, and other assorted supplies into my basket. The damage for this huge haul? About twenty-five bucks, as everything was a buck to a buck-seventy-five apiece.

One tip if you're considering getting into bento: it was really helpful that I had already made a few bento lunches beforehand using plain tupperware and things I already had on hand, as I had a much better sense of what I would actually use. Otherwise I think I would have gone much crazier than I did, and ended up with a pantry full of adorable, but impractical items. You'll be seeing different pieces of my haul in photos and entries to come, I'm sure.

I also got to reap the benefits of the bento myself. M. didn't get a chance to eat his lunch at school yesterday, so I brought it along with us in the car for the trip into the city (about half an hour from our house). It was pretty awesome to be sitting in traffic and snacking on chips and homemade guacamole - so civilized! Then on the return trip we split half a sandwich and some orange slices - the perfect little snack to tide me over until I got home to make dinner.

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had forgotten all about a truly delectable pasta dish (my favorite) that Mom makes until she made a batch of it for one of our recent family dinners together: Penne with Vodka and Spicy Tomato-Cream Sauce. Somehow one humble pound of Trader Joe's penne fed our big hungry mob (I think there were six of us) with leftovers to spare.

So I filed it away and then one night this week I was casting about for a quick, easy pasta dish to make before my kung fu class, and I recalled this recipe and the fact that I had all the ingredients on hand. (Side note - I keep my pantry stocked with pasta and canned San Marzano tomatoes, as these are the base for numerous last-minute dinners.) I whipped up a batch and M. and I each had a bowl....and then another each, and perhaps one more over the course of the night (I'm hungry when I get home).

It also served for my lunch the next day, and M.'s dinner too. Then when I returned home late (hungry again), I was dismayed to see him chowing down on the last bit of pasta....until I remembered that I ended up with extra sauce that I had stored in a separate container. I found a half-box of rigatoni in the pantry, and now there's still more left over. Lunch anyone?

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asked for a small lunch today, so I put in half a PB&J sandwich, which looks a little weird there because the bread was rectangular and I only used one slice. I prefer the diagonal cut to the straight, but I had to trim off the parts that didn't overlap.

Also pictured are orange slices, a piece of banana (I rubbed the ends with lime juice), trail mix, cheese, and homemade candied orange peel. I made a batch of the latter for the holidays and fortunately it keeps in the fridge for up to a year, so it's a nice thing to have on hand. To hold it all I used this Reynold's tupperware I got in the grocery store - I like the shape and the type of plastic, and it has a closeable steam vent in the lid.

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o matter how lazy a day I've had, I always feel productive if I've at least cooked one thing. Today it was a simple butternut squash soup, but the simplest things can be the most satisfying.

To make this soup, sauté an onion, a carrot, and a celery rib in olive oil with a bit of salt and hot pepper until tender. Add a pound of butternut squash, half a pound of potato, and 3.5 cups of liquid (water or broth) and simmer until tender. I like to garnish with a dollop of sour cream or stir in cream for a cooling contrast.

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ast night we had our friend Forest Sun play a cozy house concert in our home. We lit a fire and some candles, and I made hot cocoa and these marshmallows to go alongside. They turned out well - way better than store-bought, in my opinion.

To make marshmallows, you heat water, sugar, corn syrup, and salt to soft-ball stage, or 240F. Then you add that to softened gelatin, beat until thick and white, add in beaten egg whites and vanilla, and pour it in a pan to set up. I used oiled plastic wrap that I cut longer than the length of the pan to make a handle if I needed extra help getting the marshmallow out of the pan, and that was a good idea because it's extremely sticky.

After they set up and I removed them from the pan, I used a pizza cutter to cut them into cubes and dredged them in sifted powdered sugar. I left mine plain white vanilla, but they would make a great gift dressed up a bit with food coloring, dipped in chocolate, or with flavored oil added in.

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n my way home from the city today I had to stop by the grocery store, so I picked up an extra green vegetable for dinner. We just had kale and collard greens, but the only other decent green in the organic section was some sorry-looking broccoli at $3.98/head. On the other hand, in the regular section a fresh batch of beautiful brussels sprouts was just being added to the bins, at $1.88/pound. Sometimes I'm not so sure about organic - not the idea of it, but the reality of it in practice. Is my extra money really going towards a more sustainable product that's moving my local food chain in a positive direction? Or did the broccoli get trucked in from even further away than the sprouts? The only way to know for sure would be to shop the Good Earth store in town where they tell you these things (or trek to a farmer's market on its available days), but I'm not quite entrenched enough in the culture of my little hippie town to brave its doors. I still need to shop somewhere that sells Entenmann's and Coke.

Anyway, I picked the brussels sprouts. They roasted up beautifully and are pictured here tucked in a lettuce cup along with homemade mac and cheese, salad with separate dressing container, and sweet potato pie - a bento of winter comfort foods. I packed the salad in its own container so M. could microwave the other things if he liked. My makeshift packaging isn't ideal, but at least the pie fit on top of the salad in the main container after being wrapped up and put all together.

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n an attempt to make more winter foods that would use up our weekly produce box, I finally got around to making some sweet potato pie. I used this recipe from Epicurious pretty much as written, but I decided to make mini pies that were more bento friendly instead of one big one.

I had extra batter so I poured it into some silicone cupcake molds and placed a cutout from the pie scraps on top of each one. Kind of like a gooey cupcake. I don't know if those really worked out, but I didn't want to waste the batter so it was a good experiment.

Incidentally, the pies popped right out of their tins when they were cool enough to handle, thank goodness!

Posted by Satya at 12:21 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

here's a saying that the mother is one's first spiritual teacher, which in my case I think is true. But in terms of the culinary arts, my mom is my lifelong guru, hands down. I call her almost every time I cook, whether to get a tip on a sauce substitution, seek advice on the ever-present question, "It doesn't smell...is it still good?", or just to swap ideas on stuff we've been making lately.

My parents had a bakery when they were younger, and I definitely got some of those genes. But I take after my father in style, who is a precise and able baker. My mom, on the other hand, is a fantastically creative improviser. I follow recipes with an embarrassing amount of doggedness, but my mom never measures beyond a glom of this, a couple glugs of that - with plenty of substitutions and alterations to suit the dish or the mood.

Head on over to Dr. Sue's Kitchen to check her out - there are many gems on her site that have been family recipes since I was a little kid. My mom is da bomb.

Posted by Satya at 3:38 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

inner tonight was a potato/greens/feta cheese pie with a breadcrumb crust that I made from one of my favorite vegetarian cookbooks. Butternut squash on the side that I dressed in leftover vinaigrette. I still haven't figured out butternut squash, though I'm trying to use it so I can cook more seasonally and use everything up from our weekly organic produce box. It always tastes bland to me unless I make soup with it, so I need to figure out some good seasoning for steaming or roasting - any tips?

I used some extra potato from the pie for a quick potato salad with frozen corn, fresh parsley, and more vinaigrette - a better use for it flavor-wise than on the squash. That went into the bento in a silicone baking cup, along with leftover potato pie and squash. An avocado half rubbed with lemon and a truffle for dessert round out the meal. I packed all this up in a tupperware, but I'm hoping to pick up some more proper bento gear this weekend.

Posted by Satya at 11:28 PM | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

hanks to Lunch in a Box, I've become completely obsessed with the bento lunch now that I'm packing for M. while he's student-teaching. For my first attempt, I followed some recipes and tips on the site to make some yaki onigiri (grilled rice balls), which I packed up with a hard-boiled egg (complete with salt and pepper packet), butternut squash, japanese snack cracker mix, and gummy alphabet letters. It was fun putting it all together, but my aesthetic still needs some work I think.

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fter several disastrous espresso efforts with my basic-model home espresso machine, I decided it was time for an upgrade. My parents just got a new one and recommended the pump models, so I did some research and scooped up the Cuisinart EM-100 on sale at Macy's. The verdict? Amazing! It makes loads of crema, perfect foam with no atrocious "perfect froth" attachment, and it cranked out a cappuccino in no time that made me feel like I was in Paris. As Dr. Sue says, some things are so much better that they're worth the investment.

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