Why hello all.

For whatever that remained of my usual readers, you would be no doubt be sick of me sticking recipes and food-related items up here. Well, so am I. This had always meant to be a personal blog, and as my intrests grew out of control (do you remember that spate with jewelry, and then soap?) this tiny space had struggled to cope with the alarming variety of posts on various topics. So has my brain, confusing itself between the totally irrelevant segmentations of my life. Well, that will be ending as of today.

I am moving all my food-related postings in the future to a separate space. At the moment this is under construction, but it should be up soon-ish. As for my bento-related craze; it’s still going on after all this time; and you can visit it here. I have restrained from too many cross-postings between my personal blog and that, only on important issues like my bento4Japan cause – which I hope you will consider donating to.

In the past few years I have minimized posts of the personal nature. This is probably due to my increasing posts on my other interests and also some local-interest postings. I no longer felt comfortable blogging about personal rants/issues/whatevers in this space that I had publicised as a hold for recipes and my other mad-cap ideas. In time I hope to be in that space again – and it is with hope that moving a big chunk of my ‘cooking’ off this blog will help. I will still post my travel blogs here, it is after all me on holiday – but other than that I hope for this space to start becoming my own personal punching bag again. With time I will learn to divide my time between the various segments of my life – and in the meantime I hope you bear with me.

***omg it all sounds so dire doesn’t it?***

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I love soba – especially in a salad form. I still haven’t quite got used to the hot soupy form of soba yet; preferring udon if it was going to be served hot in a soup. I remember the first time I purchased soba – thinking that it was udon. Uh. Yeah. In my defense, I was 18 and had no idea what was what. Thank god I had a Japanese roomate and she schooled me in the difference and how soba was really only popular in the summer (not too sure how true is this?).

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My go-to soba dish is probably not authentic but it is pretty darn tasty and dare I say a great use of soba. It is also a clever way of using up leftover roast beef – I concotted this dish as a starter once when bacon’s parents dropped by without notice for lunch and I wanted to serve a starter with our mains. They appreciated the cold roast beef more than the noodles; but I fell in love with this tangy, salty and sweet dish. Wonderful in summers; or when you just need a quick meal that just so happens to be bento friendly as well.

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Soba salad with edamame & roast beef strips

Cooked soba noodles, thoroughly rinsed in cold water to get rid of the starchy residue
thinly sliced leftover roast beef slices (or chicken)
cooked edamame (I chuck mine in towards the end of the soba cooking time)

dressing
1/4 cup soy sauce
1/4 cup rice vineger
1 tbs mirin
1 tsp sugar

garnish
toasted sesame seeds
nanami togarashi (japanese mixed pepper powder)

Instructions? Mix it all up!! Yes, it really is that easy. Not only is it simple, it keeps well cold and room temperature too, making this a perfect SPEEDY bento dish. I take mine out of the fridge in the morning before I leave for work and then just leave it on my desk until lunchtime. I hate it straight-from-the-fridge cold, so this is perfect for me.

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In my bento I included some pickles as well to eat with my noodles – the pickles enhances the flavours of the noodles. Two carrot flower sticks, a brocolli and some oranges completes the bento. I love the colours in this one; purple, yellow, orange – and most importantly, all the colorful flavours blends well with each other. I did not realize how fragant this is as well – people could smell the wonderful intermingling of rice vineger and soy sauce with mirin when I opened it up during lunch time. In a good way of course – not like when I decided to bring kimchi jjigae for lunch. heh.

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****cross posted from notabrownbag***

As part of our ongoing efforts for bento4Japan (please read my post on why am I doing this) ,there is also a fundraising page on JustGiving to raise money for the disaster relief efforts. Our nominated charity is the British Red Cross, which is rallying resources to help the people in Japan.

If you are a UK taxpayer,JustGiving will reclaim 28% of your total donation and the Red Cross will end up with 123% of what you donated. JustGiving & FirstGiving takes 5% off all donations to help pay for continuous innovation in online fundraising to help more charities raise funds online. This is the most effective way of donating as the charities gets 23% more than what you donate!

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To try and boost our JustGiving collections slightly and make it easy for people in the UK and the rest of EU who want to participate; me and my friend karaimame have joined forces to set up a teeny raffle! We have four items up for grabs for anyone who donates, no matter how small. The raffle prizes are….drumroll please….

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Set 1

> – 1 onigiri mold, Pikachu shape
> – onigiri mold set : faces ( bear, girl and boy)
> – oshibori and case (little towel with a case)
> – small forks
> – small spoons
> – Chinese Zodiac animals picks
> – Animal themed baran
> – 2 sauce containers, pig shaped

(all of the above are NEW and have been sent directly from Japan)

and

> – a Thermal bento set! It consists of two inner containers, the bigger holds 300ml and the other 220ml. The smaller one has a permanent compartment division. This is a very popular option for those who prefers a hot lunch.

(the box was opened for photo purposes. It is new and unused.

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Set 2

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> – 1 double-layer bento box (cars design)
> – 1 pack of oversized picks
> – 3 nori punches – bunny, car & bear shape
> – 3 sauce containers – pig-shape,bottle-shape & tomato cover
> – 1 mini-cutter – butterfly
> – 2 blue silicon food cups – heart and star

(all of the above are NEW and have been sourced by me on a variety of bentogear shopping trips)

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Bonus prize (x2)

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Oversized food picks

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Anyone can donate, you only need a debit or credit card to do so – or paypal account. We will randomly select the recipient (using http://www.random.org/) from the list of people who donate on bento4Japan‘s Justgiving site before 3 April 2011 (2359h GMT). We will select four people, the first person can choose between my set or karaimame’s; the second will get the other set and the third and fourth person will receive a packet of picks each.

I hope that this will boost numbers a little and make the event worthwhile. We will announce the winners here and also on bento4Japan HQ – and obviously email the winners as well.

Please note that whilst I am not allowed to publicise this raffle on my JustGiving page (as I am bound by terms and conditions), anyone who donates on bento4Japan’s JustGiving page, with a valid email address, will be eligible for this raffle. In order for us to contact you, please make sure you make your email address available to us on the JustGiving fundraising page.

Thank you for your help and please dig deep and give as much as you can. Please also spread the word around, the success of this fundraising event relies on our collective effort.

P/S: The fundraising page will be active till 2016, but only donors who contributed to this page before 3rd April 2011 (2359h GMT) will be considered for the raffle. I am doing this because I am trying to encourage as many people to donate soon as the relief efforts are ongoing and urgently needed. Please donate here! If you want to find out more about why are we doing this or if you want to help, please visit our bento4Japan HQ.

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Okay, have I got the most AMAZING banana-bread recipe for you or what? I am a big fan of banana bread, and had spent ages seeking for the best banana bread recipe ever. Following normal recipes and tweaking a variety of recipes did not seem to work, but this recipe not only works, is is the perfect level of sweetness, super duper moist (sticky, even) and as light as marshmallow. I have been baking quite alot recently, but not many of my tweaked and adapted recipes turn out well…..regularly stuck with two giant loaves of hardened flour. After weeks and months of frustration, I am so stoked to be sharing a recipe here at long last – at last, no more baking #fail!

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Super-moist Banana Bread
adapted from The Hummingbird Bakery Book

to cream
250g brown sugar
2 eggs

to sieve
1 tsp baking powder + 1 tsp bicarb soda
1.5 tsp ground cinnamon
1.5 tsp ground ginger

to add
1.5 tsp essence of madagascan vanilla/scraping of 1 vanilla pod
300g mashed bananas
120g unsalted butter, melted

(this makes two 1lb loaves)

Preheat oven at 180C / 340F
Cream eggs and sugar until light and fluffy using an electric mixer.
Fold in mashed banana, you can whip this with the electric mixer.
Sieve in powdered ingredients in three batches, ensuring that it is all properly mixed in.
Add in melted butter and vanilla, and mix well.
Pour in lightly oiled loaf pans
Bake for 50 minutes – 1 hour or until the cake bounces back when depressed.
Leave cake to cool in tin for that crusty texture.
Slice, and serve with a good cuppa tea

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I have never been a massive fan of pickles, but bacon adores pickles. Pickles with cheese on crackers or sandwich, or with pork pies – anything really. The problem that I have with commercial pickles are that they are less of a pickle and more of a sauce. A commercial jar usually contains a small handful of fruits/vegs and more of the ‘sauce’. Maybe it’s part of the traditional culinary make-up of the country, but a watery pickle and cheddar cheese sandwich is an extremely popular choice for lunch.

Even thought I am not a fan of pickles, I think that pickles should really be more chunky rather than watery. It’s not ketchup, it’s a PICKLE. You would think that there needs to be more of the pickled medium rather than the pickling medium. So I have been doing some pickling for bacon, and this weekend was the turn of the farmhouse pickle. This is the pickle that is served with the ubiquitous British ploughman’s lunch – cheese, bread and pickles. It is sweet, savory and tart at the same time. The magic is in ensuring that the balance in taste and flavours are correct. And then the agonizing wait. As nice as the pickles is fresh from cooking, it is important to leave it for a month to develop and mature. The tartness stands out if eaten fresh from the pan, but if given time to develop and mature, it takes on a vastly different character of itself, almost developing an umami-like character.

Farmhouse Pickle (commercially sold as Branston’s Pickle)

to dice:
300g carrots
100g sweet gherkins
130g dried dates
300g courgettes/zuchinni (about 2 med. sized)
300g cauliflower (1/2 a medium head)
300g rutabaga/swede
150g cooking apples (1 large granny smith)
150g red onions (about 2 med. sized)

- 150g palm sugar (you can try muscavodo or other dark brown sugar)
- 300ml cider vineger
- 1-2 tsp liquid pectin
- 1.5 tsp allspice
- 0.5 tsp paprika
- 1 tsp powdered garlic
- pinch of salt

Start by sauteeing the onions, swede and carrot. Once soften, tip everything else in.

Bring this mixture to a rapid boil for 3 minutes, stirring constantly.

Leave to simmer for 1 hour…occasionally stirring and mixing pickles in the pot.

Wash and steralize new or used jars by washing in warm water. Place in a pan and leave in the oven at 120C for 15 minutes. I usually recycle used jam jars or get some pretty kliners/mason jars if they are for gifts. If you are using Kliners (or Ball Jars) please ensure that you do NOT steralize the rubber stopper in the oven. This WILL MELT.

Once the pickled mixture has softened, taste to check the level of saltiness and sweetness. Ignore the tartness, the vineger will mature with the pickle in a few weeks. Add more sugar/salt as needed.

To seal the recycled jars (hack-style), tighten the covers on the jars immediately. Place this in the oven on a baking tray, with hot water up to 1/2 the height of the jars. Turn the oven on at 150 for 20 minutes. This will suck out air from inside the jar, effectively sucking in the pop-up indicator on the jar.

Wait for a few weeks

Enjoy with cheese, crackers, sandwich…ect!!!

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This batch will be going out to bacon’s ‘two’ moms for Mother’s Day, plus a jar of my delish Caramelized Red Onion Chutney!