Totoro Bento and Hot-Dog-Opuses

 I can haz interwebz?

So - I did the moving to the Wellington. Yay! And the finding a new job. Yay! And the re-connecting with friends. Yay!

And then the internet decided that it no-longer loved me and wanted to be somewhere else. Not yay!

And then my new flatmate, Mark fixed it!! And now I am re-connected with the world, and it is most exciting! :)

Bento is totally cute, and after a long time spent watching YouTube videos - I decided to try my hand at making my own fancy bento lunch!!

It was surprisingly easy, and enormously filling... But, in practice, not something I do every day...

I chose Totoro because I looove him! (Although the Catbus is technically my favourite...)

I made him with brown rice and ground up black sesame and nigella seeds... Stuffed him with a little pulled pork and put his little cheese and nori features on...

It was all easy enough - and doesn't really require any specialist equipment! But, if you're gonna be bento - making full time you might wanna invest in some!

I also made a moulded egg and the most adorable little hot dog octopus!!

I'll just link you to Ochikeron's video for how to make Totoro Onigiri... Because I'm lazy. But below are the instructions for the cute hotdogopuses...

Taste & Create: Thali - Garlicky Spinach Rice

Further catch up on my rather delayed Thali collection today... and this instalment is Garlicky Spinach Rice!

This rice comes out the most extreme, green colour - it's fantastic!! As I have mentioned before spinach is my favourite food; so this dish was always going to be a winner!

The three chillies ground into a paste (with more garlic, fresh ginger and water) give it a bit of a bite... So either label it as not for the faint of heart, or use fewer chillies to dial it down a bit...

This recipe is fairly similar to a Greek one I've presented previously; only with extra garlic and chilli and ginger added... Puréeing the spinach also make this final dish much greener than the previous one! I'd be hard pressed to pick a favourite out of the two; the Greek dish being much richer and this being more punchy - you should try them both out and see which you like better!

Taste & Create: Seduce Your Taste Buds Thali

Eugh. I feel like a Zombie. I've gone from unemployed to over-employed in no time flat! (Not that I'm complaining per se - I'm grateful for the opportunity to be earning some savings!)But I've got a looong week of 3 shifts/day for the next 7 days so this is gonna be a brief post to get the important things out there... :)

After next week I will fill y'all in on all the details!

I had fun with Taste and Create this month! I was paired with Padmajha of Seduce Your Tastebuds and my taste buds were most certainly seduced! PJ offers a lot of tasty looking vegetarian, Indian food. Rather than selecting just one recipe to try out - I decided to chose five, and make a Thali.

'Thali' refers to the plate used to serve this meal, and is basically either a metal tray with little dishes for many curries/chutneys or a single plate with indentations. The thalis we have are of the indentation variety.

Clockwise from top left: Tomato Raita, Aloo Fry, Garlicky Spinach
Rice, Sambar. Centre: Black Sesame Seed Chutney.

The recipes I chose were:

• Aloo (potato) Fry which was amazing my favourite dish of the five! Spicy, slightly crispy and the most beautiful shade of yellow. Yum yum.
• Sambar which is a sort of runny lentil dish that I'm not a huge fan of. And, although tasty, this particular recipe didn't make a convert out of me... my guests really enjoyed it though! I really enjoyed getting out the mortar and pestle to grind my own sambar powder though!
• Garlicky Spinach Rice does what it says on the package - it's the most lurid green colour! Just brilliant!
• Tomato Raita which is a little different for the cucumber/minty raita I'd usually make. It was fun and will no doubt feature on my table again!

and finally...

• Black Sesame Seed Chutney mine looked nothing like the photo - but it was super yummy!

Now, as students, some of the spices called for may be a little odd... but, if you can buy them in only the quantities you require, can be sourced quite cheaply! I especially recommend the Aloo Fry as a good flatting meal!

Final conclusion? This was fun! And with the exception of the Sambar (which is more a reflection on me, than on the recipe itself) I'll be making these recipes in the future! The Aloo Fry was the absolute star!

Sweet, Skint Lentils and Rice

I put a lot of faith into Sam when I tried out this recipe... literally all it is is rice, lentils and onions... but, as he promises it is "surprisingly gorgeous".

I made this one day, two weeks after I last went to the supermarket... my cupboards were getting pretty bare! - But we had to eat! Lentils for protein, rice to bulk it out and onion to make it taste good... truly - that's all you need!

This is a very low effort meal, even if it takes a little while to cook - but you don't actually have to do a lot to it!

I've made this since, and will do so again - whether my cupboards are near empty, or I just got back from the supermarket... Skint Lentils and Rice are here to stay!

The Broke Student's Cupboard Feast

Okay. So, admittedly "feast" might be taking this dish one step (or a leap) too far... but it is an invaluable cupboard scraping meal. As it's based on a Nigella "recipe" (the Exhausted Mother's tea-time special from her "Bites" series) you know it's gotta be good! (I would post a link, but apparently it's not deemed a real recipe and the internet doesn't have a copy yet?)

It's a sort of rice/lentil pasta sauce soup... Nigella tells you to simply bring a jar of pasta sauce and a jar of water to the boil before stirring in a handful of rice, cooking for 10 (ish) minutes and serving to small children with a lump of Parmesan nearly the size of their heads to grate over.

My "ingredient" list is a little more extensive, but the basic premise is the same. I added lentils for protein, and frozen spinach for greens thus making it an *almost* balanced meal...

As with my last post - you need to make sure that you use a pasta sauce you like, as it is the dominant flavour - but other than that go nuts with whatever you have in your cupboard/fridge/freezer...

eg: chick peas, broccoli, pasta, un-veggie-ise it with some chopped ham... or veganise it and leave off the cheese...

The beauty of this dish was that I could not go to the supermarket for almost three weeks (not something I recommend!) and still manage to put a tasty meal on the table... Score 1 for Kat!

Greek: Cheat

Back to online shopping fiascos... This one week I'd orderd a half kilo of pork steak so that I could make beautiful souvlaki for my flatmates... But they only showed up with 200 grams! Gah! Luckily I had a little pork schnitzel left over... Enter:

 Greek Marinated "Stir-Fry" on Cheat's "Greek Spinach Rice"...

Complete with Lemon Pip...

The original recipe comes from AboutFood.com - a brilliant website, everyone should have it bookmarked! And the rice recipe is inspired by a book we have at home, but this particular Cheat is all me!

Recipes follow the jump...

An Introduction to a Blog and to Dinner

Right, so... I feed my flat of three boys and two girls... That means I've gotta try and find a balance between that which is filling, and sustaining for the boys and that is also tasty and healthy for us girls! Further more, I've recently been going to this BodySense workshop (check 'em! http://sites.yellow.co.nz/site/oceanhealth/) which is helping to clear up some common misconceptions about women's health and their bodies...

SO baring all this in mind, I present to you my first ever recipe. Lemon, Rice and Fish in Pita Pockets. This is adapted from  Jo Seagar's recipe as printed in her book Lip Smackin' (http://joseagar.com/store/books/lip-smackin).



Here goes:

Kat-ified Lemon, Fish and Rice Pita Pockets

Recipe after the jump...