–

When our older daughter started kindergarten, I found myself faced with the new responsibilities as lunch maker–a dirty word for many moms.  As the first days of school approached, I thought back to my school days and how much I loved my after school snacks in grade school.  My Italian grandmother lived across the street for all of my childhood and although my mom’s lunches were less than enticing (and often thrown away or traded out) my after school snacks were comprised of delicious home cooked ethnic foods and treats: meatball sandwiches, pasta fagioli, bread and cheese, etc.

Those recollections commingled with memories of living in Japan as an exchange student in high school and the delicious and beautiful obentos my host mom would prepare for me.  The health-conscious side of me was also keen on the Japanese diet for my child, who showed an early attraction to Asian foods and anything with “umami.”

I wanted something more for my daughter than the boring lunches of my youth or the horrifically unhealthy lunches served at most schools.  I wanted my daughter to have that warm feeling my grandmother’s foods gave me; for that comfort and love to be transferred to her even in my absence.  Maybe that’s too much to expect from a lunch but that was the impetus for my journey into obento making as an American mom.

I’m sure most of you have seen bento boxes before, but a bento box (obentou) does not define an obento.  Obentos follow two rules: the 1-2-3 rule and the size of the lunch box (be it some Tupperware or a fancy obentou).  The 1-2-3 rule defines what goes into the obento, it is 1 part protein, 2 parts fruit or vegetables and 3 parts carbohydrates.  The size of the container should be directly proportional to your caloric needs.  Our daughter, at 6 years old, uses a 500mL container.  When a 500mL container is completely filled, with no extra space, using the 1-2-3 rule you get a 500 calorie lunch; mL=calories.

While I am not an artist, I’ve always enjoyed drawing and creating yet I hardly have the time or energy to do either.  I find my creativity escapes despite myself as I doodle entire worlds on my notepad during work meetings.  Obento also gives me another outlet for my creativity through “kyaraben”.

Kayaraben or character obento is food art for kids which can be as simple as putting sesame seed eyes on your vegetables or as complex as recreating entire scenes from anime movies.  While I enjoy making kyaraben, I find our busy lives do not always allow me to indulge my inner artist so I have decided to demo one plain and one kyaraben obento.

“East meets West”

Protein: Pork Cutlet – tonkatsu

• 1 pork loin cutlet
• all-purpose flour for dredging
• salt and pepper to taste
• 1 egg
• 1 cup panko (Japanese breadcrumbs)
• oil for frying

If the pork is too thick you may want to beat it down to size before you begin.  Sprinkle the cutlet with salt and pepper then dredge it in the flour, dip in the beaten egg before, and finally dredge in the panko.  Heat your oil gently place the cutlet (dropping away from you so you don’t hurt yourself!) in the oil.  Once it is golden brown flip and repeat on the second side.

Tonkatsu Sauce from lunchinabox.net

• 1/2 t dry powdered mustard
• 1 t water
• 1/2 cup ketchup
• 2 T Worcestershire sauce
• 2.25 t soy sauce

1. Mix mustard with water until smooth.
2. In a small bowl, thoroughly mix the mustard powder/water with the ketchup, Worcestershire sauce and soy sauce.

Vegetable: Asparagus with sesame dressing (from by Joie Staff)

• 4 asparagus spears
• 1 tsp soy sauce
• 1 tsp sugar
• 1 tsp sesame oil
• 2 tsp sesame seeds (optional)

1. Steam asparagus, then cool.
2. Combine remaining ingredients to make dressing.

Fruit: raspberries

Carbohydrate: ½ bagel cut into bites with a dipping container of cream cheese.

Accessories:  silicone cups, sauce bottle for tonkatsu sauce, dipping container for cream cheese, and pick for berries.

–

“Domokun loves you”

Protein: Egg molds

Our daughter loves eggs, but a plain old white hard boiled egg in your lunch every day can get boring fast.  One of my favorite tricks to spruce up hard boiled eggs is to use an egg mold and then dip the egg in soy sauce until it is a beautiful golden brown.

The image to the left shows a freshly unmolded egg in the shape of a star.  While you can get molds specifically designed for eggs, we are cheap (ed: I prefer “thrifty”) and thus we are sticklers for multi-purpose tools in the kitchen.  I found ice cream sandwich makers in fun shapes can be used as egg and rice mold as well.

To mold an egg, begin with a freshly hard boiled (i.e. still hot) egg.  Peel the egg while hot and place the egg in the mold slowly to prevent breakage.  Seal the mold (I use rubber bands to hold the top on) and place in a bowl of ice water for 10 minutes.  When you open the mold, you’ll find the egg has assumed a new shape.

Unfortunately for Domokun, I do not have a rectangular mold.  To improvise, I flattened an egg between two plates to give his body a more rectangular shape then flipped it in some soy to bronze him up.  I then rolled a second egg in soy sauce and sliced it up to form his legs, arms and teeth.

Carbohydrate:  Inari-zushi AKA Domokun’s head (recipe from by Naomi Kijima)

• 1 small aburage puff (tofu puff available from most asian food stores)
• 1-2 T cooked rice
• 1 slice of red pepper

Simply soak the puff in boiling water to soften it, then slice it open to form the mouth and stuff the rice inside.  Then place the pepper over the opening to keep the rice inside and to make the red we see in Domo Kun’s mouth.   At this point I used the teeth I cut from the egg and placed them over the pepper.  I used a toothpick to slide a bit of the egg under the aburage to hold it all in place.

Vegetable: Quick Mushrooms (recipe from by Naomi Kijima)

• 1/2 T soy sauce
• 1 t mirin
• 3 T water
• 1 oz mushrooms (I used oyster  mushrooms from Mill Creek)

Combine all the ingredients, except the mushrooms, and bring them to a boil.  Throw in the cleaned and roughly chopped mushrooms and coat them with the sauce.  Let cool and place them into a cup (to contain the sauce) before placing in the container.

Vegetable: Sprouts in silicone cup from Tiny Greens.  I also used the beautiful rosy radish sprouts and one sunflower sprout to make his sweet bouquet.

Vegetable/Carbohydrate: California Rolls

In addition to the books Bento Boxes and Kawaii Bento Boxes, that are credited above, I encourage you to visit lunchinabox.net which is my number one go-to resource for all things obento.

Our daughter reminds me at least once a week how much she looks forward to the lunches I make for her.    Other children, and even some teachers, admire her lunches which make her, and I, feel pretty special.   In the end, crafting these lunches for her can be work, but it’s worth it because a whole lotta love can fit in a 500ml box.

Our second daughter blessed us with a warm-weather June 30 birthday. This meant we could plan an outdoor party, which allowed us to host it at our house. I don’t remember who first brought up the idea, but we decided that it was time for us to tackle a new culinary challenge, a pig roast. I’ve never cooked single piece of meat larger than 6 pounds or so, so this was going to be a quite a novel experience.

There were so many factors to consider, and so many different components to fit together. We picked a date, came up with an initial guest list, and then set in to decide upon the cooking equipment and the pig source. To be honest, the pig was easy–we got it from the University Meat Science Lab folks. Now, I know that sounds scary, to have some laboratory pig, but we are so blown away by their sausages that I couldn’t pass it up. Plus, it’s local and cost-effective.

Choosing the cooking equipment and/or method of cooking was much harder. There are so many options: pit, grill, rotisserie, charcoal, gas, pellets, smoke. After researching what was available from the rental companies around town, we had narrowed it down to two options. One was a charcoal grill with a spit attachment large enough to spin our little piggy into wood-fired piggy goodness. This would be cheaper, but hard to maintain temperature. The other option was a large pellet-fired smoker/grill. The cost was much higher, but temperature control would be easy, and the flavor should be excellent.

In part due to a scheduling conflict, we ended up choosing the latter, and after a small hiccup in getting it home, found ourselves with a huge metal box ready to cook some meat. The Traeger COM-200 has 4 shelves inside, with up to a total of 50 square feet of cooking surface. It’s an amazing piece of machinery. Once I was using it, I was amazed at how easy it was. You load some wood pellets in the back (we used hickory), plug it in, and turn it on. It’s got a digital temperature control, so you just set it and forget it.

As I’ve mentioned, I’ve never cooked a whole pig before, so I went with a simple preparation. I added (kosher) salt and pepper liberally throughout the body cavity, and that was it. Since I am opposed to buying pre-ground pepper, I took a tip from Alton Brown and used power tools to help grind all the pepper I would use. I just attached my cordless drill to my pepper mill and cranked out a pile of pepper in mere seconds.

The hog we purchased was 114 pounds. It came wrapped in a thick plastic bag, the legs tied up with string and ready to be roasted. Not to devolve into the macabre, but it was the largest nearly-intact dead thing I’ve ever laid my hands on. I guess seeing this animal on my table (as opposed to nondescript cuts of meat), gave me a feeling of duty and responsibility to prepare it well. Having a large, whole dead animal in front of you is an experience not everyone has had (or wants to). I’m no butcher, but I looked over the carcass just the same. The animal was cleaned well, inside and out. A large number and inspection stamp marked its back, between the shoulders. The layer of belly fat was sufficient, but not excessive. In comparison to what I’ve seen in their meat case, this pig was smaller and younger than what they normally butcher for retail cuts.

Thanks to the Traeger, cooking the pig was really straightforward. It sat in there for about 11 1/2 hours at 250 deg F. Being paranoid, I checked the temperature of the ham, and it was plenty done. Wrestling it out of the grill and onto a foil-covered table was… interesting. Once there, I set in with a knife, breaking open the skin, and started pulling out the meat. Most of it was tender and dripping with juice, but the meat from the hams was still a little tougher to pull out, due, I think, to all the silverskin you can find therein.

In addition to a couple store-bought barbecue sauces, I made my mother’s recipe as well (with a couple tweaks). To her credit, that sauce went the fastest. I rounded out the meal with some simple cornbread, a smoked potato salad, and two green salads. Thinking that noone would eat salad, my wife bought a bagged salad mix and some dressings. I decided I wanted to have something with a little crunch, and I eventually got a recipe from a friend who used to work at Union Square Cafe. I doubled the recipe, and while trimming and cutting two pounds of snap peas into julienne takes a while, it was worth it. It was a big hit with many guests, and I recommend it if you can get your hands on good snap peas. The recipe I received is at the end of the post.

The whole party was a big undertaking, and required a lot of planning, but it was successful. There will definitely be a “next time”, though maybe not this year unless someone else wants to pay for the whole thing. Nothing went wrong, partly due to the idiot-proof cooking equipment and the easy nature of the sides I made. I’ll probably be braver next time, clear out the fridge and freezer a bit more and put more on the grill. We underestimated the meat yield, and figured it would probably help to have about twice the number of guests, though plenty of them were happy to take home bags of pork.

There are plenty more pictures of the event, including many pre- and post-roast pig pics in my Pig Roast Flickr set.

Sugar Snap Pea Salad with Pancetta, Pecorino and Mint

recipe from the Spring 2007 Union Square Cafe Newsletter

Serves 6

1 tablespoon kosher salt

1 pound sugar snap peas, trimmed at each end

1/4 pound pancetta, cut into 1-inch x 1/8th-inch lardoons

2 tablespoons minced red onion

1/8 cup lemon juice

1/8 cup Champagne, or white wine vinegar

1/2 cup extra virgin olive oil

2-3 tablespoons finely sliced mint

5 tablespoons grated Pecorino Romano cheese

2-3 teaspoons Fleur de Sel (sea salt)

1 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper

1. Bring 3 quarts water to boil in a large pot and add the kosher salt. Have ready a large bowl of ice water to stop the cooking of the peas. Cook the peas in the water for just 10 seconds. Drain the peas in a colander and immediately add them to the ice water. Remove the peas from the ice water after about 2 minutes. Drain well in the colander and gently pat dry with a paper towel. Julienne the peas by cutting them on a sharp diagonal. Set the sliced peas aside in the refrigerator.
2. Place the pancetta and 1 tablespoon of water into a 10-inch sauté pan set over low heat. Stir the pancetta gently with a wooden spoon to separate while it heats up. The water will eventually evaporate and the pancetta will begin rendering its fat (approximately 4-5 minutes). Turn the heat up to medium and cook, stirring and scraping the pan often until the pancetta Is completely rendered and crisp (another 4-5 minutes). Drain the pancetta in a colander set over a bowl. Set aside the crisped pancetta at room temperature.
3. Place the minced onion in a non-reactive bowl large enough to mix the pea salad. Pour in the lemon juice, vinegar, and olive oil, and stir to combine with the onions.
4. Place the peas, pancetta, mint, 4 tablespoons of the pecorino, the Fleur de Sel and ground black pepper into the bowl with the vinaigrette. Mix the salad, taste, and adjust the seasoning to your liking. Sprinkle the remaining tablespoon of Pecorino over the salad, and serve.