Skip to main content

A cute bento salad




Did you ever see the blog Cooking Gallery? It is on my blogroll and among my favourite blogs to visit because it is full of fantastic bento ideas! And my kids like it too, but they cannot really take proper decorated bentos to school, it is not practical in NZ, so they usually have a sandwich, some fruit and when possible some raw veggies too, all stuff that can be eaten with fingers or with a bento pick. So bento tend to be fun meal to eat at home! 

And just for children? No! Yesterday I was at home alone for lunch and I thought that I should eat more salad. Kazuyo gave me some of her quails' eggs and inspired by Cooking Gallery pretty 'faces' and figurines I made a fun bento just for myself.


To be honest with you if I had made this for the kids I would have taken out all my flower cutters to cut the veggies like flowers and so on, but here I limited myself in making a little sleeping doll. Of course I would like to have a set of nori pounchers like these (I tried to cut the nori with scissors but it is hard), but I haven't seen them in New Zealand (let me know if you do!!) so I used some caraway seeds for the eyes and mouth. In the bento there are young spinach leaves, cucumber, cherry tomatoes, cannelloni beans, olives, quail eggs, baby carrot and avocado. Dressed with lemon, olive oil and salt. If you don't have quail eggs, you can use bocconcini, or for a vegan version a small new potato.


Photos and Recipes by Alessandra Zecchini ©
Labels:

Comments

  1. francescaJuly 30, 2012 at 8:22 AM

    Il mio bimbo piccolo potrbbe mangirsi anche la scatola di un apreparazione cosi`
    farncesca

    ReplyDelete
  2. Gerry @Foodness GraciousJuly 30, 2012 at 4:47 PM

    Beautiful, just awesome. My daughter would love this box..

    ReplyDelete
  3. Dolci a gogoJuly 31, 2012 at 4:39 PM

    Ciao Alessandra volevo dirti che a me farebbe piu che piacere che tu partecipassi al mio contest quindi aspetto un tuo delizioso dolce al cucchiaio. Bacioni e questo bento è delizioso!!!!
    Imma

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

How to make Rose Turkish Delights (Lokum), and Sweet New Zealand

Rose Turkish Delights (Lokum) Before I start I would like to say that I don't have a sugar thermometer, essential if you are really into confectionery, and that I didn't use much sugar for these Turkish delights. Many recipes use much more sugar, and it is not that I wanted to make a low sugar treat here (it is still pretty sweet), it is just that making it at home really makes me realize how much sugar there is already in my diet, and if I can have something with a little less... well, why not! This method is 'home friendly' i.e. these can be made at home with very little effort and equipment, and the recipe comes from my book  Sweet As...  where I also have the recipe for lavender and orange blossom Turkish Delights. Ingredients 1 l water 300 g sugar 2 tbsp lemon juice 100 g cornflour 1 tbsp frozen raspberries 1 tbsp rose water icing sugar (very little) and cornflour (lots) to dust. In a pot put hal
9 comments
Read more

Home Made Marzipan Sweets

This is another recipe from my book Sweet As , and something that I love to make for Xmas. I would like to say that for marzipan you should get the best almonds around, natural, but here in New Zealand the almonds taste different from the ones in Italy. They are imported, not sure where from most of the time, but they are not top grade almonds. Still, with a few tips, you can make your marzipan taste great even with 'regular' almonds! Buy them natural, not blanched, you need to blanche then yourself or the result will be too dry. To blanch them you need to put them in boiling water for a couple of minutes, and then add cold water and take the skin off, one by one. For this recipe you will need: 200 g almonds 100 g icing sugar 5 apricot kernels. As I was saying before, the almond here have little taste, so I like to collect the stones from apricot and get the almonds out. They are a real pain to crack! In the photo above you can see apricot stones and kernels. The apricot kernel
13 comments
Read more

Silver beet Paneer, a variation of Palak Paneer

The other day I showed you my curry made with borage , ‘invented’ because I have tons of it in the garden! The other green-leaf crop that does well in Auckland is silver beet. My old plants (from last year!) got so tall that I started collecting only the little leaves from the stalks, and they look like spinach. One of my favourite Indian dishes is Palak Paneer (or Panir), spinach with panir cottage cheese, and this variation is made using my silver beet. I washed (many times!) the small silver beet leaves, and then I steamed them and drain them. In a heavy pot I heated 2 tbsp of vegetable oil (I used rice bran oil) and sautéed for 30 seconds: 1/2 tsp ground cumin 1/2 tsp ground coriander 1 tsp turmeric 1/3 tsp ground chili then I added 2 roughly chopped shallots and, after 3 minutes, a good pinch of salt and the cooked silver beet. I cooked everything on low for about 20 minutes (you may need to add just a little water if the silver beet is too dry) and then finely pureed the content
5 comments
Read more