bento lunch

jury lunch #7 - the last one -
Salmon Yaki and Lemon Simmered Kabocha



One of my favorite lunches is eating bentos - Japanese box lunches - from the food court at Shirokiya, a department store in Hawaii. I always have a hard time deciding which one to choose and try to get a combination that has the most of my favorites things to eat.

I had two old takeout containers I thought I could use to pack lunch. Then I had to think of what to put in them that would be good eaten at room temperature... In the fridge was a small piece of defrosted salmon and some leftover raw tuna from last night's hand rolls. I remembered a recipe for salmon yaki (in a cookbook that Jimmy had just borrowed from the Pasadena Library) which I luckily had all the ingredients for, so I made that. Last night, at the South Pasadena Farmer's market, we had picked up a kabocha melon, so one of our favorite recipes from Elizabeth Andoh's Washoku - simmered kabocha with lemon was part of lunch. This dish is almost better the next day, even cold! I packed the rice with furikake shaken on top, placed the melon, and fish on top and slid some slices of vegetarian duck for some variety. I tried to slice the tuna into something resembling sashimi, and packed that separately. My salmon wasn't as tasty as I hoped - I'll have to work on improving it - but lunch was still pretty good.

Jury duty lunch has been a pretty good exercise in improvisation under time pressure. I'm not good at it, so I hope I've gotten better for it :)