Recently I updated my old Chicken Nanban post with new pictures. I cook this dish pretty often because it’s easy and my family likes it. The updated photos had skewers attached to the dish so they look like an appetizer dish. Typically I just plate the chicken, two kinds of bell peppers, and eggplant in order and sprinkle Shiso leaves (Perilla) on top. The flavor of deep fried chicken with a sweet and sour sauce is so addicting! When I make dishes for dinner, I put aside enough food to pack for bento before serving to my family. For today’s recipe, I packed 1 serving of cooled Chicken Nanban in small container and froze it. I buy these small freezer containers at Japanese $1 store (Daiso) but you can use small Ziploc containers for the same purpose. Sometimes if my son like the dish I will pack 2 servings so he can enjoy the same dish 2 weeks in a roll. And what else do I pack? You will see broccoli and tomatoes in my bento box quite often. Those are some veggies that my son enjoys eating so I always put them. You can blanch (or use microwave to cook) broccoli every time, or you can do it all at once and freeze them. And the same goes to Tamagoyaki (Japanese Rolled Omelette). If you want to save some time in the morning, then please visit Basic Freezing Techniques for more info.
I cannot stress enough that making bento is not so hard if you have leftover and some frozen bento ingredients. One more thing. When you look at today’s bento consisting of plain white rice with an umeboshi (Japanese salty pickled plum) in the center, does it look familiar to you? This particular bento is called Hinomaru bento (日の丸弁当). This name was taken from the Hinomaru, the Japanese flag. It’s a little tibid for today’s bento. Let’s start today’s bento now! Previous Dinner was:
Lunch Next Day:
Chicken Nanban Bento A medium size box of fruits: oranges and yellow peaches. Water bottle
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