“Nyonya Zong” (“Chaang) in a box

I was driving along Green Rd late yesterday afternoon, and decided to buy some nyonya zong to be packed into my bento today. Save for weekends, and the first and fifteenth day of the chinese calendar month, there will always be two ladies selling local nyonya kuihs from about 3 pm onwards, outside the older shops along Green Rd.

Although I used to buy from the older lady, I have also tried some from the younger lady, and found the nyonya zong nicer. I also bought some kuihs, but they weren’t that nice.

The kuihs and zong:

I thought the best way to eat the zong (a la bento) was to just cut it in half and try and cram as much of it together in the box. I managed to get about two-thirds into my box, as I had to save some space for hard-boiled eggs. I included some langsats (indonesian variety), and some japanese sweet potatoes. My bento this morning:

This is the last bento for the week, as the weekend is upon us again. Have a good one!

Shortcuts

I had a relatively busy afternoon yesterday, and I was also going to a family block rosary with my mum and sister in the evening. That didn’t leave me much time to prepare my brunch for today. It was a toss between eating at the coffeeshop or doing something simple and easy. Opting for the latter, I took a quick look in the pantry and the fridge.

I saw this:

I think this is my favourite brand of instant noodles, except when I want to have a curry flavour, and that has got to be Maggi’s.  Adding some leftover chicken, thinly julienned carrots, and a few florets of broccoli, you’ll get a decent mee goreng. However, I didn’t have enough protein to complement this, so I made a very easy herbed chicken nuggets. I found this recipe by Paula Deen on FoodNetwork. Using only chicket fillets, dipped in mixture of an egg and 2 tablespoons of milk, then dredge in crushed sour cream & onion crisps. Drizzle some melted butter over each nugget, and bake in oven for about 20 minutes. Easy peasy!

The only crips I had was this:

It was a mad dash this morning, as I woke up late, due to not being able to sleep early as I happily and irresponsibly consumed coffee at 8.30 pm last night. Fortunately was able to put a decent bento in place.

The chicken nuggets in the top right hand box. I had some quail eggs, and some left over spam pieces, so I just cut them into stars using a cookie cutter. I think I just wanted some color!

On a different note, my daughter came back from school to this:

(Leftover broccoli florets, fish fingers, rice wrapped with cos lettuce, topped with furikake).

Needless to say, she finished her lunch today…every single bit. Thanks to Lina!

Pastry Challenge

Quiche Lorraine….first taste of it was eons ago, when I was staying in a boarding house during my matriculation year in Perth, WA. Absolutely loved it…well the first few months anyway. I didn’t know it was going to be a weekly affair, and it was served either on tuesday or wednesday. By the end of my matriculation year, I had enough of quiche lorraine and lasagne. It was a few years later that I ate either one again. Quiche is such a common Aussie food, and was almost everywhere, anyway.

A couple of decades later, it’s up to self to make good quiche. I’ve attempted (key word) once before, and decided to attempt again. The recipe, again from Exclusively Food. The short crust pastry was almost a nightmare to prepare, eventhough I switched on the A/C unit, and dipped hands in iced water a couple of times. I was told I could use “pastry margarine” so the dough will be easier to handle, but that would be eating “trans fat” and defeats the purpose of doing it at home, with the best quality ingredients one can find. If anyone has any handy tips for making short crust pastry in a tropical/equatorial climate, using only butter, flour, an egg yolk, and some cold water, please let me know. I will even sign up for that one single course in pastry making!

I did manage (lots of “bandaids” repair!!) to somehow get it all together, and this was the final result:

Spending one whole afternoon on the above, quiche lorraine would be the obvious choice in my bento box today.

That’s the lower box, the upper box had my usual salad and fruits:

Promised my friend in the gym I’ll pack her a box today, so her box was this:

It was a 40 minutes cardio session today (20 minutes cross-trainer with maximum heart rate @ 160 bpm; and 20 minutes on treadmill, maximum heart rate @ 150bpm), so the quiche was enjoyed without one single once of guilt. But…..the day isn’t quite finished yet…..

Back to bento

Just a few words, as pictures pretty much self-explanatory. Bento posts are fun, and also serves to remind self on what I’ve packed for myself.

I think part of the fun of preparing a bento is that while the mouth eats, the “eye also eats”.

The upper box: dragon fruit & oranges; salad of various lettuces, avocado and grape tomotoes, with toasted pine nuts (which goes really well with aragula lettuce and avocado), vinaigrette in yellow sauce container.

The lower box: hard-boiled eggs (soy sauce in pink sauce container); leftover crepes with maple syrup, mini peanut butter and kaya sandwiches (homemade bread); vintage cheddar cheese.

I should have a few more bento boxes and accessories on their way to me soon. My very good friends in Singapore just went to Daiso and tediously shopped for me! Thanks a million, C & J!

Weekend Breakfasts

I now look forward to the weekends when I can actually sit down and have a proper breakfast. Preparing brunch for my bento box is still an exciting activity, and this weekend, I had a chance to semi-plan my boxes for the week.

On Saturday monring, I decided to have a typical sarawakian breakfast, ie. go out and eat something at the coffeeshop. Having not had laksa for a while, I decided to try a relatively new laksa stall at “98″ coffeeshop in Tabuan Jaya Baru. I was told to try as it was apparently “almost as good as Chong Choon’s laksa, which is still my favourite.  It was not a good idea to venture into town this Saturday, as some major roads were closed for the Governor’s birthday celebration/parade, and traffic would be diverted. Traffic woes…not something I want to start the weekend with, for sure.

Well, I was told about “98″ a couple of months ago, and either the laksa stall operator is now different, or the standard has gone awry, as the laksa I had was not even fractionally similar to Chong Choon’s. Plus, the prawns were not all that fresh, and that basically spoiled the entire meal. I managed about 5 mouthfuls, before deciding it was “waste of calories”, and the risk of food poisoning from dodgy prawns seemed high.

Anyway, this was the laksa:

For Sunday, I thought best to just do something at home for breakfast. It’s been ages and ages since I’ve made crepes, so decided to do some, since the daughter also loves them. I like this recipe from Exclusively Food . It’s simple to whip up, using just eggs, flour and milk. A crepe pan is the best thing ever!

I was able to make 8 crepes, and saved 2 for my bento for Monday morning (how I’m going to eat it, no idea still). So I had a piece smothered with strawberry jam, and also had some muesli.

Hope everyone is well rested, and all ready for a brand new week! Here’s wishing everyone a fabulous week ahead.

Saturday Treat

My daughter loves flipping through my collection of recipe books (mostly bought because of the wonderful pictures!), and she happened to pick one small ‘Periplus Mini Cookbooks”, entitled “Homestyle Japanese Cooking”. While she mostly just flip the pages, and points out stuff she recognise, she actually requested for a particular photo today, and that was  “Garlic Steak”. That was all the reason I needed to go out and buy chilled tenderloin steaks for dinner.

It was a simple enough recipe,  having to  just marinate the steaks in a mixture of garlic, soy and mirin, for 30 minutes, and then saute till done to personal preference. I’m partial to medium to well-done. I also sauted some fresh shitake mushrooms. The recipe also included a simple side dish of julienned daikon and carrot, marinated in sugar and vinegar mixture.

This was dinner:

I also saw “Bird’s Eye” oven wedges in the supermarket, and I was transported back in time, to my uni days in Perth, so had to grab a packet, and decided to thrown some in the oven, for dinner tonight. I think I still prefer to just throw the steaks on the frying pan as is, and then just season with sea salt and coarse grounded black pepper. I thought the marinade was a tad too “overpowering” and overtook the taste of the beef. All in all, I think this qualified for the 50/50 carb/protein ratio requirement. What do you think?

Sudden baking mood

I’ve always believed that if you want to eat, you eat well, and eat the real deal.  We are inundated with a myriad of “low fat” foods these days, yet the statistics on obesity and cardiovascular diseases have not improved. I was once introduced to a “very nice and healthy cake”, the healthy being it was completely butter-less. The first thing that came to mind was how a cake could be nice without butter (barring angel/chiffon cakes). Instead of butter, the “healthy” cake was substituted with corn oil, which most of  us  now already know, becomes “hydrogenated fat” when cooked/baked in high heat. That’s even more detrimental to our health than saturated fat. I don’t eat cake everyday, but when I do, I’d have the full flavour saturated fat option any time!

I’m not a good baker, especially cakes, but am able to bake simple old fashioned cakes. One of my favourite cake is Madeira cake, and eventhough it’s basically a butter cake, the first time I had it, was in London, and we bought it from the “to clear” shelf in Marks&Spencer, as it was a day past it’s “sell by” date (when traveling, there’s a tendency to revert to “student budget” mentality, for some reason). Still I thought it was yummy even though it was such a simple cake.

In my opinion there’s not one single bakery here that sells rich butter cake anymore. For one, the cost of butter is so high now, and bakeries have resorted to “butter substitutes”, which when used, do smell like butter, but taste very different. I don’t really want to know what constitutes “butter substitutes”.

Long story short, instead of buying, I decided to bake my own, using Nigella Lawson’s recipe for Madeira cake. Basic ingredients of butter, sugar, lemon (zest & juice), eggs, and flour. I also wanted to give some to my daughter’s teachers and classmates, so it was a double recipe.

It has been raining on and off here all morning, so the lure of a second cup of coffee was too strong to resist. Since “what you resist, persist”, I had an early afternoon tea coffee delight.

Have a good weekend everyone.

P.S. There was a bento box this morning, but will leave that for another post.

Thursday Bento

It has only been three days of “bento-ing”, and I was starting to get slightly stressed by what to prepare and pack. I’ve been drooling over the food prepared by tfp, and inspired from one of her recent posts, I decided to make tuna patties. We’ve had beef patties and fish (ikan tenggiri) patties, but not tuna patties. It was easy enough to prepare, using two cans of tuna (in olive oil),3 new potatoes (boiled, then mashed), red onions, diced celery, an egg and some pepper. The patties were pan fried yesterday, and was warmed up in the oven early this morning.

I was aiming for 50/50 protein/carbs ratio, so I may have gotten it right today.

The grape tomatoes were really crunchy and organic as well. I also included some mulberries, which is a rarity here. I had this for brunch at around 10.30am, and am surprisingly still feeling “full” 4 hours later. I probably should be more disciplined in planning my food.

My daughter’s box today was also something similar:

Now I’m looking for inspiration for tomorrow’s bento, although I don’t have much time preparing them this evening. Oh well, there’s always sandwiches!

A good friend in Singapore just told me she’ll send over some bento boxes…so that’s something to look forward to! Thank you heaps, C!

Bento Goodness

Now what’s this…..

Unveiling…..

A proper bento box!!!

Okay…this is the only decent bento box I can find in the interim, unless I use the Lock&Lock boxes, which work quite well as well. This has the “cute” factor, and till I get to Daiso in 1 Borneo next month, this will suffice. My daughter was not pleased that I was using this one today, and she had to make do with her old Lock&Lock. She was bribable.

Well, this box was ordered online from New Stylish Tokyo, and although their inventory is not very extensive, it’s not too shabby either. I was told the 100Yen stores are pretty good, but alas, there isn’t one here. I also ordered some food picks, and mini sauce containers, which will be featured when I use them.

Eager to use this box, I stir fried noodles with corn kernels, carrots, spam pieces and diced long beans yesterday evening (so I can just warm up this morning). Also made some omelette (with diced chicken and sun-dried tomatoes).  So the bottom box was this:

(The prawns were a last minute addition, as there was one left over from yesterday’s lunch, and also brimming with enthusiasm, my domestic assistant, Lina, suggested that I include it in my box).

For the upper layer, I pan fried some pork sausages (to be eaten with the honey mustard sauce in the green silicon cup), and some salad. I put some vinaigrette in the flower shaped mini sauce container.

My complete bento box looked like this:

Come to think of it, this bento box is really good if one is particular about portion control.  I think this box has a total capacity of 600 ml, which according to this guide, is right for my age group.

My daughter’s box:

(Clockwise from upper left: lightly fried button mushrooms, mixed veg of lettuce, carrots and roma tomatoes, pork sausages, tomoto sauce).

So what was for brunch or lunch? Hope it was interesting and nourishing as well.

Tuesday Bento Brunch

I might have caught the bento bug, so am determined to enjoy every moment. I had some kompia left, and was in a “bagel” mood. In fusion mode, I made kompia with cream cheese and smoked salmon. I also included 3 cheese cubes, as I always run the risk of not having enough protein in my diet (as strange as it may sound). I also prepared some salad (lettuce, carrots, corn kernels, capsicums, mushrooms, grilled chicken breast pieces), and mixed fruits (papayas, strawberries and grapes). I made bigger portions to share with a friend (who incidentally is going to start bento-ing as well). We’re rather excited at what we’re going to pack in our bento boxes!!

So this was my bento this morning:

Look out for tomorrow’s post! (eek, just committed myself…hope the mood (to post) may prevail)