Inai

I’d never come across the word confit before until I saw justbento’s sweet pepper and onion confit . Wiki says, "Confit (French) is a generic term for various kinds of food that have been immersed in a substance for both flavor and preservation ". And now that I know the word, I can use it. *laughs* I got my mum to make our own confit, which is actually the sauce used with Chinese restaurants’ Chicken Chop or Pork Chop rice. *grin*

I present, my first bento:

The bottom (smaller tier) was used for plain calrose rice. The top tier has lentil patties, a few ladies fingers and a muffin cup of the onion and green pepper confit. I’d expected the lentil patties to be a bit dry so I’d added the confit as part of the meal. I love eating things with sauce, and using it to flavour plain rice, which is why my confit is brimming with thick sauce. Hohoho~!

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It was my first time making those lentil burgers, using a recipe from a small book. Should you wish to try it yourself, here goes:

- 250g yellow lentils (or half)
- water (enough to cook your lentils till they’re super soft)
- some diced carrot
- some diced onion
- a bit of oil
- salt and pepper to taste (or use chicken stock and pepper)
- 170g breadcrumbs (or half)

The recipe included rolled oats as well, in the same quantity as the breadcrumbs, but I didn’t have that so I omitted it. Put the lentils in water, add some salt and bring to boil. Then let simmer and cover the pot. I approximated the amount of water. So just keep adding more if you find that it’s drying up and your lentils aren’t even cooked yet. When your lentils are super soft, feel free to attempt to drain them if you find it too wet and mushy. My lentil was quite dry after I drained out the water.

Fry the onions and carrot in a bit of oil in a pan till they’re soft. Add the quantities you’d want to see in the lentil patties. I added equal amounts of onion and carrot. They won’t brown if you don’t use too high a heat. When the veggies are cooked, add them to your lentils, and then add the breadcrumbs and oats (if you want them) and mix it all up, flavouring as you please. Shape the lentil burgers into thin patties or meatball-shaped ones like mine (they’re small to fit into my bento). Then pan fry them in a bit of oil till they’re browned.

I think my patties might have been too dry, as the patties fell apart slightly around the edges when I’d fried them. I did freeze some patties as I made too much with 250g of lentils. Using 250g, I made around 20 meatball-sized patties. *_* The recipe said to divide the mixture into 8 portions and shape them into flat patties. I guess that’d really make them burger-sized. This recipe is really too dry and the lentil taste a bit strong (for those who don’t like anything bean-like that much), so make yourself some sauce to dip the patties in.

For the confit, it’s just sliced onions and green pepper fried in some tomato sauce, soy sauce and sugar. That’s roughly the taste. So it’s slightly salty, sour and sweet at the same time. My mum made this, but the next time, I’ll be noting down exactly what she’d added and share what goes into the mix. ^_^ (I love eating chicken chop or pork chop rice because of this sauce.)

The ladies fingers were inspired by some bento pics I saw online. Because I’m not sure if green pepper and onion count as vegetables, I wanted something green (and bright) in my bento. Peas cooked in the confit would have been overkill alongside with lentil patties. Luckily we had some ladies finger in the fridge so three were boiled till tender and sliced in half.

Despite how small I’d found the bento, I was full three quarters through the rice, and I left behind a lentil patty and just a bit of the confit. I did feel hungry at 4 something in the afternoon, so I just finished off the leftovers in my bento. ^_^

Overall, I’m quite happy with this bento attempt. And you can expect that this confit is something I’ll be adding to quite a number of my bento in the future. ^o^

I’ve been inspired to make my own bento (that’s lunchboxes, for some of you) to bring to work. I’d come across kitchencow , and then cookingcute and finally justbento , and all three of them really made me want to get up and start making my own lunch. It helps that I’d recently just bought something frivolous and am freaking broke so homemade lunch would be nice. (No, that’s half true; I’d also spent the rest of my money on stuff for the kitchen, so I’m now trying to stretch out my last $20 or so till the end of next month. Haha.)

I was looking at jlist and eBay for bentos and they are really expensive for some plastic containers (albeit the cuteness, they are still plastic and made in China). We’re talking about US$15 or so for a two-tiered plastic container, plus maybe a pair of plastic chopsticks and a small bag to carry it in. And then I find out that some of the bento stuff on eBay are sold in Daiso or similar 100 yen stores ! Argh! What a lucky find that bit of information was! And Cassiel said that there was a Daiso near her workplace and she’d go look for me. ^o^

Nonetheless, I also decided to go look at the Underten stores here. They carry stuff from Daiso and Ikea, and it’s costs B$3.90, B$4.90 or more for certain Daiso items, but hey, it beats paying US$2.99 or US$3.50 _and_ shipping. I actually found a two-tiered bento of the size I had my eye on, and it was in a colour and design I don’t mind, so I bought it, and I also bought a matching three-tiered snack bento too. Too bad they didn’t have matching chopsticks and a case… Or an elastic band for the bentos, but it’ll do for now.

Here’s my new goodies at $3.90 each set:

It actually says "polka-dot; love me little, love me long". Haha~! *_*

I had no idea how _small_ it would be. I mean, sure I knew the measurements, which are around 7" x 2.5" by 2.5" or x 3" for each tier. But I still didn’t expect them to seem so small. All the food pictures tend to make the bentos look larger, I guess. Here, take a look at size comparison (for those of you who own pinkies):

The two tiers fit inside one another so at the end of the day, your bento becomes a one-tier. Which is pretty neat.

And here are the snack boxes’ tiers:

I’m not sure I’ll be using the small ones much as I don’t have that many fresh fruits I want to eat. I usually bring whole apples to work, if I do feel like fruit. But I figure they’d be good for extra veggies or extra bites to share out.

The size of the bento is around 330ml for the top case, and 250ml for the bottom. And apparently, you can judge just how many calories you put in the container by its size . So my two-tiered bento there is around 580ml, which roughly translates to 580 calories. But if you choose your foods correctly, your meal is usually around 500 calories. I’m following justbento ’s calorie count here; I love that site because Maki provides the calorie count for all her bentos and it gives me an idea of just how many calories I’d be eating if I prepare similar things.

Yes, I’m doing this bento thing because I’d like to have a more balanced diet, and it excites me: the thought of making my own lovely and delicious lunch. ^_^ So I’m going to try.

I bought a microwave steamer to steam veggies like broccoli, carrots and snow peas easily. I also bought some brown calrose rice, as it’s more nutritious, though I wonder if I should have bothered. Apparently, it cooks differently from normal rice. And I hadn’t been aware that you’d need a rice cooker that can cook different types of rice (ie, with different timer settings). O_o But we’ll see how it goes.

Anyways, expect to see a bento or two soon. ^_^

Okay, so when Jade talked about pasta, I had an urge to eat it and went to look for recipes. Of course, I had to make my pasta before I realised she’d posted some really simple and quick recipes to try. *falls over* I’d gone to recipezaar and found a few simple carbonara recipes that used items I already had and didn’t use cream or evaporated milk. The simple recipes were pretty similar so I generally scribbled down the amounts of ingredients I’d need and the general idea of preparing the dish.

So yesterday, for a very late lunch (because I’d read till late again and I woke up late again), I attempted my carbonara. I went and weighed out 2oz of angel hair pasta (at least I think that’s what it should be. The label just calls it spaghetti. The thinner type.), and I am making sure I remember this amount because it’s exactly right for one person. About a fistful of pasta with your fingers clenched around it but still touching your palm–at least for me anyway. So I boiled the pasta in some salted water because I know that I’ll never be able to add enough salt to the dish otherwise as I’m quite inexperienced and still don’t know just how much gives enough taste. (With my cold noodle salad, the noodles had been quite salty when cooked actually, but it was balanced out by the dressing.)

So anyways, while the pasta was cooking away, I chopped up one small red onion, and chopped up a slice of ham. In truth, I wanted something crispier in my pasta, but we don’t eat bacon so we didn’t have any. I fried the onions in a bit of melted butter till brown (because I wanted the colour) and then I dropped in the ham to fry. They didn’t turn crispy *pout* and became even softer pieces of meat. Then I broke an egg in a bowl, and added salt and a few dashes of ground nutmeg (1/8 tsp) and some freshly grated parmesan cheese (1/8 of a cup); and beat it all up.

Drain your pasta and add it to the pan. The fire should be out. Though one recipe had suggested keeping it on low heat. I kept it on low heat (you’ll know why as you read on). I added some more melted butter (I used 1 tbsp in total for the whole thing) and stirred it through the pasta. Then I added my egg mixture and mixed it all up. I must admit that at this point I had paused. My pasta had sauce, yes, but it was uncooked egg, no matter what you call it! And I have a thing about uncooked egg. Unless it’s in a cha soba dipping sauce, or in a runny egg yolk, I can’t stomach the taste of uncooked egg. *_* So I was quite wary about calling the dish done. I mean, in one recipe I’d read, it said the egg will be cooked by the hot pasta. And it didn’t look anywhere near cooked, cos I _saw_ drips of egg. -_- So I turned up the heat up a bit and stirred the pasta about. And it still all looked uncooked. ToT It might have been the darn cheese in the egg, which didn’t help me much. But when the egg was sticking to the pan, I turned off the heat, turned my pasta onto a plate and hoped for the best. I had a bit of parmesan left over, so I sprinkled it over the plate.

Just look at that miserable looking ham. *pokes it* And if you can see lil brown bits, I can’t decide if it was the nutmeg or my onions. Haha.

Comments about my try: As expected, I didn’t add enough salt, but the nutmeg added quite a bit of flavour and the saltiness of the ham helped a lot. I wish I’d found the minced garlic I’d wanted to add, and used a bit more onion to flavour as well. (I’d eaten some carbonara which had seemed like it was made with cream of mushroom soup, but it had some fried onions in it that had really added to the taste and I’d liked it, but it seems I couldn’t duplicate the onion taste.)

I was fine with the way the overall dish turned out. It tasted all right, though it was a bit dry and I would have liked it creamier. I’d eaten carbonara at a restaurant before, and it had been dryer than my attempt, but there had still been quite a rich creamy taste to it. Might be the use of cream, huh? I found the parmesan too sandy for my liking though (I don’t know if I should have ground it finely or not, but I guess it didn’t melt properly). And I don’t really know why people use parmesan so I’m going to look it up. I find the cheese a bit bland. Is it the smell it adds to dishes? Actually I find mozarella even blander. But it’s such a nice texture. Or maybe they just don’t sell nice cheeses here. -_-

I’ll try Jade’s recipe next time. But you know… Are you sure the egg won’t taste all raw and funny uncooked with all that stuff mixed in it? T_T

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Oh, I’d used melted butter because the recipes I’d looked at used that. I _might_ have used olive oil instead, but I’m a n00b at this olive oil thing, and the type I’d bought was quite…fragrant and had a bit of a distinct flavour, and I wasn’t sure I wanted that with all that egg sauce. Now, perhaps someone might like to mention the type of olive oils they use and why they like them? As a reference for me. ^_^;

Today, I woke up really late as I’d only gone to bed at around 4am the night before. I had started reading Sharon Shinn’s Archangel again, and because I didn’t feel sleepy, I kept reading till the book was finished. I was pretty dismayed when I realised what time it was as I’d meant to do some errands today, but I slept till I was satisfied and woke up close to noon. I was too lazy to cook something, and there was quite a bit of sushi leftover from yesterday’s lunch, which was very disappointing, but I don’t feel like the leftovers, so I put aside the thought of lunch till I was really hungry a few hours later.

In the end, I cooked my favourite maggi mee:

Usually, I don’t add things to my maggi, but I’ve taken a liking to adding a fresh tomato and some spinach. I usually add the chopped tomato with the flavouring after the water has boiled and wait till my tomatoes have softened. Quite a bit of water would have boiled away, and then, when satisfied with how soft my tomatoes are, I add my noodles. Then, when noodles are done, add in an egg and quickly beat it up in the pot (unless you like it whole, which I don’t in noodles). Then add your spinach, stir around a bit to cook the spinach, and pour it all in a bowl. There isn’t a lot of soup as sometimes, I don’t like soup and prefer more of a sauce instead.

Here’s two of my favourite flavours:

In Malay, they just mean Chicken flavour and Curry flavour. My other favourite flavour is Asam Laksa, which is spicy and sour (and I wouldn’t need to add a tomato).

I love my Maggi mee so it’s quite strange that I really dislike the msg taste of any other Maggi seasoning, be it the soy sauce, seasoning, the oyster sauce or the chicken stock. Maybe I associate the taste with instant noodles, so when I taste the artificialness of Maggi in other properly cooked foods, it just tastes wrong. Probably. ^_^;

It was my first time measuring out rice and water completely on my own and thank goodness the rice wasn’t too soft. ^_^; While it was cooling, I went and fried my crispy fish fingers (a new ingredient I wanted to try with sushi rice) and boiled my crabsticks. I left out the carrots and cucumbers cos by the time I was done with the fish, I just didn’t want to spend anymore time chopping things up. My rice was also too cool by then. ^_^;

And I also tried to make that egg roll thing. I knew the basics of how to do it from Fei’s recipe book. I didn’t have an egg pan, so I just used my small frying pan. I was rather pleased with the result:

I don’t recall what this egg roll on rice thingy is called, as I never order it. I don’t like it because it is usually sweet egg. And now that I’ve made my own non-sweet version, I can safely say I just don’t like my egg cooked this way. It’s fine in rolled makis, but out on a nigiri like this, I dislike the smoothness of the egg against the rice. I’m never making this again. Not for myself anyway. But hey, at least I can do it and it does look rather decent–if a bit on the small side.

They usually use crispy chicken to roll in makis, but I don’t really know if I wanted to try to debone a chicken (or if I knew how to figure out how) so I used some fish:

It’s not that bad, but the fish was rather bland. And it didn’t go together very well with the rice like this. I think next time, I’m better off eating crispy fish with plain rice, rather than a fancy-smancy-looking nigiri.

And my last new attempt was reverse roll makis. And I can tell you I’m never doing them again. I didn’t have anything to roll outside the rice, so it was all sticky. Trying to cut them was a pain as well. *_* Definitely not worth the trouble. And since I only had fish and crabstick, I made individual small rolls with them:

The normal rolled maki you see in the first picture is for my mum. The egg roll looks pretty nice and thick with the crabstick, if a bit too plain.

How do you guys like your sushi rice? My mum and I like it really sour. So we usually add a lot of sushi rice vinegar to our rice. But when we make them for parties or other people, we usually tone it down. I didn’t use as much sushi vinegar this time, and I found that I really wanted the sour taste to season the blandness in the egg and fish. (No, I don’t eat my sushi with soy sauce or wasabi. I just can’t appreciate soy sauce.) So I learned a few things today, which was nice. ^_^

Cupcakes for you, Fei~! ^o^ Congrats on your freelance assignments!! ^o^ Sorry it took so long to reply to that email of yours. I’d been meaning to do something like this to congratulate you, and I finally managed to do so last night. ^_~

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As a note: Cupcakes aren’t my type of thing, but it seems people tend to give them away as gifts or whatnot, so I thought, okay, I’ll try them. Followed the recipe off bakingbites , but I don’t think mine turned out as pretty or as successful.

Anyone know what cupcake batter should be like? I thought this was a bit too dry (it definitely wasn’t fluid smooth)–and definitely too sweet. *_* I doubt I will ever make cupcakes again. Or frosting again. I didn’t used the cream cheese but tried another frosting and all that butter and sugar. ToT Overkill! ToT

But these were for you, Fei! ^o^

(No on in the house can finish them actually. *laughs* They’re _mini_ cupcakes, and I only made about a dozen or so, but they’re still not finished. Other cakes like the orange butter cake rarely last till the morning. -_- I guess it shows that cupcakes, like cookies, aren’t a favourite in my house.

So here was another attempt at making scones, and I’m almost inclined to think that the recipe book of my mum’s friend is a bit unreliable. -_- I’ve tried three recipes so far, and I think the most successful had been my first scones. But I’d tried an apple and ginger muffin and the batter was very liquid, and this time, my potato scones, the batter was too liquid as well. O_o

The book’s recipe uses cups for measuring liquids and I wonder if I’d have been better off measuring precise millimetres instead. -_- My scones were a failure.

They ended up being crispy biscuits (which I like, as I adore crispy things), but they weren’t the soft fluffy things the book’s picture imply they should be. *_*

Ah well. -_- I don’t know if I’ll be making scones anymore in the future. *laughs* They just aren’t my kind of thing. Though they do make a nice substitute for an "English muffin", whatever that really is. They’re just a bit more flavourful than bread, which is nice, and they do have a nice crust when straight out of the oven.

If I do attempt scones again, I think I’ll just grab some recipes online instead of follow that recipe book.

Also to note: I have no success with muffin recipes as well. -_- I’ve made two attempts so far, both not photographed and both failures, with the batter not cooked completely. -_-