Showing posts with label brocolini. Show all posts
Showing posts with label brocolini. Show all posts

Green Curry Chicken Noodles bento

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Curry noodles bento - 19.01.2011

To tie in with the green curry bento I posted back in October, I decided to make my first bento post of 2011, again a green curry one. I still owed you all the recipe to that one anyway.

A rather straigthforward bento, to get back into the groove : green curry chicken with brocoli, zucchini and noodles, and the finishing touch radishes for that little dash of colour.

Since the beginning of this year, I have decided to address the weight issue (again) and I think bento-ing will be very helpful for this as well.  I will therefore try to add the WW propoints totals for all bentos.

How to green curry bento : (3 servings - 12 propoints per serving)

Ingredients:
* 4 tsp of vegetal oil
* 400g boneless chicken thighs, diced
* 1 zucchini, diced
* a few broccoli rosets (but you can use green beans, or eggplant or whatever vegetable you prefer), cut up
* 4 spring onions, diced
* 3 cm of fresh ginger, peeled and grated
* 2 garlic cloves, diced
* 1 Tsp of fish sauce
* 1 tsp of green curry paste
* 250 ml defatted chicken stock
* 200 ml coconut milk
* 400 g pre-cooked noodles
* coriander
* lime juice

Heat one tbsp of oil in a wok and fry the diced chicken.  Remove from the pan and set aside.

Add the remaining oil and sauté the vegetables for about 4 minutes.  (If you use eggplant, it will suck up the oil at first but release it afterwards.) Add the spring onion, the curry paste and the ginger and stirfry for a minute.

Add the garlic, the fish sauce, the chicken stock and the coconut milk, bring to a boil and let simmer for 10 minutes. Add all the chicken you set aside and the noodles and let simmer for an additional 4 minutes. Before serving sprinkle with coriander and lime juice.  Done.

Bon appetit !

St. Patrick's Day bento

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St Patrick's Day bento #1 - 17.03.2010


Not a drop of Irish blood is running through my veins, nor is Lá Fhéile Pádraig celebrated around these parts, but any holiday involving drinks, food and having a jolly good time in general is worth dedicating a bento to :o)

In my pursuit of using green items, I clearly went "a bit" overboard but the sun is shining, trees are budding, the birdies are singing to their heart's content and they even announced a peak of 18°C for tomorrow, so I think I am entitled to some green euphoria :o)

My Paddy Day bento has green rice (coloured using Maki's technique posted on JustBento.com) with a cucumber peel shamrock in a green lettuce cradle, brocolini, asperagus, baby pak choi, brocoli sprouts, leftover sausage covered with snowpeas, goat cheese maki and a orange bell pepper heart for that dash of colour. :o)

The fruit section is equally green with granny apple, grapes, kiwi slices and kiwi berries, separated from the rest with cucumber baran. And for the final touch, as Easter is nearing, pistacchio Easter eggs :o)


St Patrick's Day bento #1 - 17.03.2010


Sweetie's bento is also ... green, what did you expect? :o) It has as usual roughly the same ingredients : green rice with a cucumber peel shamrock, leftover sausage, snowpeas & sugarsnaps, goat cheese maki, carrot slices and orange bell pepper hearts. On the other side of the cucumber baran : granny apple, grapes, nashi, kiwi slices, kiwi berries and a little Easter egg.

Lemongrass scampi & beef/pork patty bento

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Lemongrass scampi bento - 16.03.2010


Two slightly different bento for me and P. today, as both the scampi and the minced meat had to be cooked up before they turned bad. I know that the date on the packages is indicative and says "best before" and not "unfit for consumption after", but still, I don't like taking risks.

My faithful sakura bento (I love that one so much, I keep using this one every single time) has some white rice topped with bellpepper flowers, scampis stirfried with scallions and lemongrass surrounded by carrot baran, a cherry tomato, brocolini and green asperagus covered with snowpeas, some cauliflower roses and carrot kinpira to the left. The whole veggie section is separated from the fruits by red lettuce leafs, and those fruits are the usual clementine, grapes, plums and nectarine.


Beef patty bento - 16.03.2010


P. has a lunch bento and a dessert sidecar today. The lunch bento consists of beef/pork patties with scallion and red onion, white rice topped with red pepper flowers and surrounded by red lettuce baran, brocolini with snowpeas and sugar snaps, carrot kinpira, a cherry tomato and the last of the mozzarella balls.

The dessert sidecar holds beside the usual fruits (clementine, grapes, plums, nectarine, apple and nashi), also a small cup of the spring edition M&Ms I found during grocery shopping last weekend.

Wortelstoemp bento

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For those of you unfamiliar with Belgian "cuisine", the title of this post will have raised some eyebrows.  Stoemp is a popular dish over here, eaten by everybody up and down the social ladder. It evokes cosy family dinners and hearty winter meals. But what is it exactly? Stoemp consists of mashed potatoes with another vegetable, and is usually named after the other vegetable used. In this case, the stoemp has carrots in it and therefore it is called wortelstoemp (wortel being the Dutch word for carrot). But you could also make spinaziestoemp (spinach), erwtenstoemp (green peas), preistoemp (leek), koolstoemp (cabbage), ...

The recipe is also quite straightforward : cook the potatoes and the veggies, mash everything roughly together (you should still be able to make out the pieces), season to taste with salt, pepper, nutmeg and the herbs you like.

Anyway, this bento almost didn't make it because I was dead tired yesterday and went to sleep around 10 PM. (If you know that my normal bed time hour on working days is somewhere between 0.30 AM and 1.00 AM, you can appreciate my effort.) So, I didn't feel like making a bento last night and went to sleep thinking I would grab a sandwich on my way to work. When the alarm went of at 6.00 AM however, I felt completely refreshed and decided in the spur of the moment, to make a bento anyway. A morning bento ... now, that's a first.

I made this one in half a hour's time. Quite an achievement!

Wortelstoemp bento - 10.03.2010

In here you'll find two wortelstoemp cones (leftover from last night's dinner) topped with cheese sakura and lined with broccoli sprouts. On top of the green sprouts, there is a quail egg and some baby corn slices. In order to go with this month's B.O.M.B., I used red lettuce leaves and cauliflower to separate the broccolini and snowpeas from the rest of the bento. The protein part consists of storebought falafel (I have given up on trying to make my own) and for the sweet section I have red and yellow plum, nectarine, black and white grapes, blueberries and kiwiberries.

Smakelijk. :o)

The nameless bento

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Ok, the title of this post is lame, but frankly there's isn't anything special that stands out in this bento and as my mom says "if you don't know what to say, better say nothing at all". So there you go.


This bento has a few leftover items in it : the sliced meatballs are from last night's dinner and there was still a bit of vitelotte mash left, so I took that one along as well. For the veggies I have red lettuce (under the meat), brocolini (finally found some in the stores last weekend), sugar snaps and two cherry tomatoes/mozarella/mini corn skewers. The fruit part of the bento has black and white grapes, kiwiberries, half a strawberry, blueberries, plum, nectarin, clementine and a slice of kiwano (see more about that below).




P. only took a fruit snack to the office today as a lunch meeting had been sheduled.










KIWANO



Ok, so most of my friends know that I can't resist anything marked new or looking unfamiliar while grocery shopping. I'm the dream of any marketeer : the volunteer human guinea pig :o)

Anyway, this fruit is the result of that weakness. I saw this strange looking thing in the exotic fruits section and I just had to buy it (truthful to my "try everything at least once" motto). Kiwano : the name sounded promising and called to mind images of sunny tropical islands. Needless to say that I had high expectations...

and it didn't live up to it. It doesn't have any particular taste and could best be compared to a lightly sweetened cucumber. Very fresh (even for a fruit that has to stay out of the fridge) but otherwise tasteless. It looks pretty as decoration but I will pass on this one next time around. Definetely not worth its price.