Innie or Outie

This version of local bento boxes came from a new neighborhood “Mom & Pop” restaurant. The bento was what I would call a kiddies-size, about half the regular portions. The meal consisted of rice, umeboshi, hotdog, deep-fried pork cutlet, deep-fried sardines, potato salad, beans, tofu, seaweed, and hard-boiled egg. Accompanying the bento box was a soup with the flavor of soba broth.

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This meal makes use of the last of the New Year leftovers, New-Years-Platter Pasta Dinner:

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For the dish, I chopped leftover New Year’s platter goodies into bite-size pieces; sautéed 10 bite-size beef chunks and 8 shrimp in olive oil and minced garlic paste; added the New Year goodies, 2 cups leftover pasta salad, a dash of white wine vinegar, and 1/2 teaspoon red chili pepper flakes; and sprinkled with a light layer of parmesan cheese.. As an accompaniment, reheated leftover deep-fried quails eggs on-a-stick with a soy sauce dipping sauce.

‘Tis the season for leftovers. This is an idea hubby came up with for extra New Year’s goodies, Papa’s New-Year-Platter Skillet Paella:

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The meal was quite simple, hubby lightly browned uncooked rice in butter; and added saffron, chicken broth, julienned homegrown bell peppers, cherry tomatoes, and various remains from the New Year Platter. It was surpisingly tasty, but I think I would have crumbled the meatballs though.

This is one of our traditions, instead of cooking on New Year’s Day we pick-up a platter from one of the local grocery stores. This is one of the better platters we’ve had the pleasure to eat. It contained a little bit of everything, such as three types of chicken, three types of shrimp, shumai, scallops, ham, spring rolls, beef-wrapped green beans, meatballs, bamboo shoot-carrot-pork mix, harusame, edamame, sesame-covered mochi balls, etc.

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This version of local oba-style take-out meals is basicaly the same as Bento #53 except the deep-fried pork cutlet has tartar sauce instead of ketchup; and meatballs are replaced with pork luncheon meat.

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