Bent on Bento

I bought some fancy-shaped pasta yesterday and thought it would be cool to incorporate that element into Ethan’s dinner bento.  So his bento yesterday evening was a simple sausage and pasta salad with Mickey & Friends pasta shapes, slices of chicken franks/sausages and some broccoli.  I also offered some chicken fries (frozen cooked ones which I baked in the oven for about 15 minutes or so) served with ranch dressing.

Ethan immediately ate the franks (he loves them), but only ate ONE Mickey-shaped pasta, after Daddy and Mommy each had one too.  He did not even touch the chicken fries, but tasted the ranch dressing a little.  He made a face though. LOL

I am now on the lookout for alphabet chicken nuggets, so if anyone knows where I can find these, please let me know 🙂

Toddlers & Kids broccoli, chicken, frankfurters, pasta, sausages

I decided to introduce something unique to my son for his bento dinner meal last Friday.  I had just bought some fresh chicken breast fillet from the supermarket that afternoon, so I decided to try out this simple Chicken Dippers recipe from Chef Michael Smith.  I didn’t have any corn meal, so I used Quaker oats instead. 

Curiosity got the better of me and I just had to try one of the chicken dippers after they were baked and they actually tasted quite good.  I had wanted to serve the dippers with ranch dressing, but since I did not have any available, I served them with good ol’ mayo instead.

For carbs, there was some steamed rice, and for vegetables, I put some steamed broccoli and sliced carrots.

Unfortunately, Ethan didn’t want any of the chicken dippers 🙁 and only had the rice with some gravy.  Does anyone have any other ideas how to make my boy eat some protein?

Toddlers & Kids broccoli, carrots, chicken, oats, rice

Inspired by what looked like incredibly mouth-watering bentos to me in Bento Delights’ Uniquely Malaysian Bento and Hijack Queen’s Skewed Turmeric Chicken bento, I finally took matters into my own hands and tried making my very own chicken satay!

Chicken Satay Marinade

• Turmeric powder
• Honey garlic dip (I got these from Safeway, and I used it because I didn’t have any honey on me)
• Sugar
• Salt
• Dash of pepper
• A little bit of crushed black peppercorns

Originally, I had intended to use chicken thigh fillets, but they weren’t available in the supermarket yesterday, so I removed the skin from the chicken drumsticks that I had and cut out the drumstick meat instead.  I saved the drumstick bones to make herbal soup 🙂

I mixed the marinade with the chicken fillet and fixed them onto bamboo skewers before putting them into a Pyrex container in the fridge to sit for at least 6 hours.  Then I baked them in the oven at 350ºF till done, turning them over once.  I suppose if you have a grill function, it is best that you use that to grill the satay.

The satay sticks were then placed atop steamed rice in bottom compartment of the bento.  The top compartment held chunks of onions and cucumbers (Malaysian satay style) and a small container of satay sauce, which I managed to buy ready from the stores, thanks to Lee Kum Kee.  (I ought to try making the peanut sauce myself too, one of these days)

I added a hard-boiled egg for added color and to fill up my hubby’s tummy.  Looks delicious, no?

Adults chicken, egg, rice

It had been some time since I cooked with ginger, so yesterday I thought I would experiment with a simple dish; something my hubby and I love: ginger soy sauce chicken.  I did not have a recipe, but I thought I would try a concoction I had in mind.  I marinaded the chicken pieces with soy sauce, oyster sauce, sesame oil, crushed black peppercorns and some of the all-purpose marinade with herbs I had recently bought.  I added in some sliced white button mushrooms and slices of young ginger.

I was out the whole day and only started cooking at about 6:00p.m. 🙂

First I heated up some vegetable oil in a saucepan and sautéed the marinaded chicken.  I added some water and a little bit of chicken base, and simmered it for about 20 minutes while waiting for the rice to cook. 

The result was a truly satisfying dish, cooked in no time at all!  🙂

I put aside a portion for hubby’s bento today.  Added in a hard-boiled egg on a bed of steamed lady’s fingers.  The little orange container holds some sambal belacan we brought from Malaysia. 🙂

Adults chicken, egg, rice

A few days ago, I packed a really really simple bento for my hubby.  I had tried making steamed herbal chicken a couple of weeks ago with prepacked herbal ingredients, but this second attempt saw me using just the ingredients stated in the original recipe from HaveYouEaten.net.

I managed to get yok chok (dried polygonatum) from the Asian grocer here and of course, I added my all-time favorite kei chi (wolfberries).  Simple and delicious, this bento is nutritious too!

Adults chicken, rice

One of the things that irk me most about bento-ing is the cleaning up of the bento boxes after.  It gets tougher to clean if I had prepared a bento with gravy which is rather oily, or curry.  Because most bento boxes are plastic, oil and grease tends to stick to the surface and since I only get to wash them after I get back from work, I have to use a lot of detergent (and strength!).

Most of the time, I would rinse it out with a little bit of soap after I am done with lunch at work, but that does not happen all the time.

So what do I do to minimize the hassle?

I recently bought a set of Pyrex containers, that came with covers (they were on sale!).  Pyrex is made of glass and so cleaning oil and grease off of glass is a breeze! 

The downside is, of course, glass containers tend to be rather heavy, and there is a (slight) tendency of breakage.  But apart from that, these containers work rather well.  They are safe for the freezer, microwave and steamer – just don’t put them directly over the stove though!

Yesterday I packed my hubby’s bento by including a small Pyrex bowl of Chicken Six-Flavor Soup.  In the main bento, there was some Hainanese Chicken rice, with slices of cucumber, and a side dish of leftover tofu from our restaurant outing the day before.

The Pyrex bowl is a great substitute for the thermos flask, if you are a soup-lover like me.  You’ll need to be able to heat it up before you drink it though!  And soup has such a feel-good factor to it, don’t you think so?

Adults, Tools & Equipment chicken, prawns, rice, soup, tofu

Today, I made a very simple and quick bento with some leftovers of the chicken serai (lemongrass chicken) stew we had for dinner last night.  I added a hard-boiled egg and topped off my steamed rice with some gravy from the chicken serai.  I do so like gravy on my rice. 🙂

I don’t own any fancy egg moulds yet, but I am on the lookout for some, so hopefully I will get to produce some more aesthetically-pleasing hard-boiled eggs soon!

And for the first time, I used my simple white bento lunchbox.  It has 3 removable partitions: 1 large and 2 smaller ones, and I have not used it since I bought it.  It doesn’t hold much food, but it works well with me now that I am in my third trimester of pregnancy and cannot really eat a lot at one sitting.  I do so love this box because it looks so classic and neat.  Wouldn’t you agree?

Adults, Tools & Equipment chicken, egg, rice

I tried stir-frying some bitter gourd with eggs and shrimp last night, and since it turned out okay, I packed it for lunch today.  I also made some Hainanese chicken rice with some steamed chicken.  What was missing was the cili padi!

Adults chicken, egg, prawns, rice

Today, because I woke up late, I decided to pack a quickie bento for hubby.  I call this a quickie bento because almost all the items can be prepared and cooked at the same time:

• Instant noodles: I boiled the noodles and while waiting for it to cook, I prepared the noodle sauce on a separate plate (soy sauce: dark and light, oyster sauce, sesame oil, dash of pepper)
• Steamed chicken drumstick: I rubbed some salt on the chicken drumstick and let it steam in the wok till cooked.
• Broccoli and carrots: lightly boiled in a saucepan for a few minutes.

I also threw in a container of chilli sauce for good measure.  Having basic ingredients in the fridge comes in handy when we are short of time and need to pack a quick lunch.

Adults chicken, noodles

Yesterday, I experimented with a dish I had tasted in one of my favorite Nyonya restaurants back in Penang.  The dish is called “Lemak Sui Kari Kay”, which is Hokkien for Curry Chicken cooked in coconut milk with a tinge of sourish flavor to it.  The difference between this dish and the conventional curry chicken is that “Lemak Sui Kari Kay” replaces the potatoes with chunks of pineapples.  So the result is a spicy sweet and sour curry.

Today my hubby brought a bento to work that is a Penang nyonya delicacy 🙂

I also added some furikake seasoning to the steamed rice for added flavor, and oh, a blueberry muffin for dessert.

Adults chicken, rice