Category Archives: art

: : Bento #8 ~ Inspired by olive! magazine : :

Waiting at the departure lounge at Heathrow Airport, London, I picked up a free cooking magazine called olive! that is published by the BBC. Flipping through it, came across a very tantalizing picture of fish with soba noodles and edamame. Well, inspiration for one of my lunches one day.

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Remembering that I had bought some somen noodles and edamame beans before I left for UK, I decided to give this a whirl. I substitute the salmon for mackerel since that is what we have at hand in the fridge. I had the 5-energy somen noodle from an organic shop (looking for reduce salt noodles isn’t easy) and also inspired (again) by another picture.

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I could only squeeze in 4 of the noodles in here. It doesn’t look a lot, I know, but I think it was ok. And it will be filling enough for me. I put them into small quaint silicon cups.

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The last somen noodle, I put into a small container and put it in the fish. The fish was poached with miso paste, lemon juice and cracked black peppercorn. I actually pounded the peppercorn using a pestle and mortar. Marinated it for about 10-15 min and then poached it. The edamame beans were boiled until cook. To be honest, I think that they are still partially cooked but it shouldn’t be a problem eating them.

According to the recipe link, this should be under 500 calories. It may actually be less because my fish and noodle portion wasn’t as big so I hope that it’s not over the 500 calories. Also, there’s reduced salt here as I didn’t used as much miso paste.

Anyway, I really loved the magazine olive! and the concept of Eat In, Eat Out, Eat Away. Plus, the fact that they publish out the actual calories and nutritional information for each recipe (well, nearly all), is definitely interesting. And the fact that there is a face-off between Gordon Ramsay and a reader on their meals, it sure is interesting.

: : How long does it take to make a bento : :

6 bentos so far and not much difference in the timing because I don’t do much preparation before hand.

I usually try to start cooking around 8 pm and finish by 9:30 pm. This includes cutting the veggie and meat, cooking and then decoration.

I’m getting better at it but still needs a lot of work. Noodles are still an issue as I can taste the salt in them. Ah well.

Am bringing one bento box container with me when I go over to UK. At least got a small pre-packed lunch. 🙂