ISBN: 4770031246

 
Author: Makiko Itoh

Product Description
Bento fever has recently swept across the West, fueled not just by an interest in cute, decorative food, but by the desire for an economical, healthy approach to eating in these times of recession. A leading light in the popularization of bento has been Makiko Itoh, whose blog, Just Bento, boasts hundreds of thousands of subscribers, all of whom love her delicious recipes and practical bento-making tips.

Now, for the first time, Itoh’s expertise has been packaged in book form. The Just Bento Cookbook contains twenty-five attractive bento menus and more than 150 recipes, all of which have been especially created for this book and are divided into two main sections, Japanese and Not-so-Japanese. The Japanese section includes classic bento menus such as Salted Salmon Bento and Chicken Karaage Bento, while the Not-so-Japanese section shows how Western food can be adapted to the bento concept, with delicious menus such as Summer Vegetable Gratin Bento and Everyone-Loves-a-Pie Bento.

In addition to the recipes, Itoh includes sections on bento-making equipment, bento staples to make and stock, basic cooking techniques, and a glossary. A planning-chart section is included, showing readers how they might organize their weekly bento making.

In a market full of bento books that emphasize the cute and the decorative, this book stands out for its emphasis on the health and economic benefits of the bento, and for the very practical guidelines on how to ensure that a daily bento lunch is something that can easily be incorporated into anyone’s lifestyle. This is the perfect book for the bento beginner, but will also provide a wealth of new bento recipe ideas and tips for bento aficionados.

From Just Bento: Deconstructed Salade Niçoise Bento

Salade Niçoise is a classic composed salad that originates from the sunny town of Nice in the south of France. It’s perfect for a summer bento lunch.

Makes 1 serving.

Ingredients

• 1 medium potato
• 2 Tbsp extra virgin olive oil
• 6–8 quail eggs, or 1 chicken egg
• 2 tsp red wine vinegar
• 1 tsp Dijon-style mustard

Directions

Make ready three bento boxes: a large one to hold the lettuce and greens; a medium one for the potato, eggs, and tomatoes; and a small one for the tuna, olives, and dressing that fits inside the large one if possible. Wash, peel, and cut up the potato into ½ inch (1cm) cubes. Put the potato pieces in a small pan and add enough cold salted water to cover. Boil until tender, about 10 minutes. Drain well. Coat lightly with 1 teaspoon of the olive oil. Carefully pierce the rounded end of each quail egg with a thin needle before boiling; this will make them easier to peel. Quail eggs only need to be boiled for 4 minutes to achieve the hard-boiled state. Peel the eggs. Make a simple vinaigrette by combining the rest of the olive oil, the vinegar, mustard, salt, and pepper in the small bento box. Mix well.

To Assemble This Bento

Put the potato and eggs in the medium bento box. Decorate with the cherry tomatoes. Put the well-drained tuna, the capers, and the olives in the small bento box with the vinaigrette. Fill the largest bento box with the salad greens and lettuce. Nestle the small bento box in the greens, and put on the lid. You may want to pack everything together with an ice pack in hot weather. When ready to eat, simply put all the salad components into the large bento box: the potato and eggs first, and the tuna mixture on top. Mix well and enjoy!

Timeline

Prepare the potato, eggs, and tuna the night before and store in the refrigerator. Wash and dry the salad greens beforehand also. Pack the greens into the bento box in the morning for optimum freshness. If you eat a lot of salads, you could make vinaigrette in quantity and stock it in the refrigerator. I like to use a screw-top jar for this, and give it a good shake before using.

From Just Bento: Chicken and Three-Color Pepper Stir-fry Bento

This beginner bento is made with everyday ingredients that you may already have in your pantry. It can be assembled in twenty minutes or less without any advance preparation. It’s a good one to start your bento-making adventures with.

Makes 1 serving.

Contents

• Chicken and Three-Color Pepper Stir-fry
• Instant Cabbage and Cucumber Pickles
• Blanched Broccoli
• Basic White Rice
• Cherry Tomatoes

Chicken and Three-Color Pepper Stir-fry

You can spice up this versatile and colorful stir-fry by adding some hot pepper sauce such as sriracha to taste. To ensure fast and even cooking, cut the peppers into small, regular cubes.

• 1/2 Tbsp olive or other vegetable oil
• 3 Tbsp roughly chopped green onion
• 2 tsp peeled and finely chopped fresh ginger
• 1/3 each medium-sized red, green, and yellow sweet peppers, de-seeded and cut into 1/2 inch (1 cm) chunks
• salt, for sprinkling
• 2 oz (60g) boneless, skinless chicken breast, cut into 1/2 inch (1 cm) chunks
• black pepper, to taste
• 1 Tbsp soy sauce
• lettuce or shiso leaves used as dividers, optional

Heat the oil in a frying pan over medium heat. Add the green onion and ginger and stir-fry for 1–2 minutes until the oil is fragrant. Turn the heat up to the highest setting and add the peppers to the pan. Stir-fry with a spatula or long chopsticks. Sprinkle in some salt—this draws out moisture from the vegetables and cooks them a bit faster. Continue stir-frying for 4–5 minutes, until the peppers are cooked. Push the vegetables to the sides of the pan, and add the chicken to the exposed bottom. Leave for a couple of minutes, then turn over to cook the other side. Stir everything together, and add black pepper and soy sauce. Turn the stir-fry from the pan onto a cold plate so that it cools rapidly. When cooled, pack into the bento box, using the lettuce or shiso leaves as a divider. Ahead-of-time note: Cut up the vegetables and chicken the night before, so everything is ready to just cook. Be sure to keep the raw chicken stored separately from the vegetables for safety.

Instant Cabbage and Cucumber Pickles

Instant or overnight pickled vegetables are very popular in Japan. They are like dressing-less salads, and the salty, slightly sour crunch provides a nice contrast to other foods. They can be eaten immediately or kept stored in the refrigerator for 3–4 days.

• 1 large green cabbage leaf
• 2-inch-long (5 cm) English cucumber, sliced into thin rounds
• 1/2 tsp sea salt
• squeeze of lemon juice

Cut out the tough vein of the cabbage leaf, and slice the rest into strips. Sprinkle the cabbage and cucumber with the salt, and massage well with your hands until the vegetables go limp. Let rest for at least 5 minutes. Add a squeeze of lemon juice. Squeeze out any excess moisture before packing into a bento box. I like to put the pickles in a bento divider cup or cupcake liner to prevent the flavors from mingling with other flavors in the box.

ISBN: 0375504877

 
Author: Edmund Morris

Of all our great presidents, Theodore Roosevelt is the only one whose greatness increased out of office. When he toured Europe in 1910 as plain ?Colonel Roosevelt,? he was hailed as the most famous man in the world. Crowned heads vied to put him up in their palaces. ?If I see another king,? he joked, ?I think I shall bite him.?

Had TR won his historic ?Bull Moose? campaign in 1912 (when he outpolled the sitting president, William Howard Taft), he might have averted World War I, so great was his international influence. Had he not died in 1919, at the early age of sixty, he would unquestionably have been reelected to a third term in the White House and completed the work he began in 1901 of establishing the United States as a model democracy, militarily strong and socially just.

This biography by Edmund Morris, the Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award?winning author of The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt and Theodore Rex, is itself the completion of a trilogy sure to stand as definitive. Packed with more adventure, variety, drama, humor, and tragedy than a big novel, yet documented down to the smallest fact, it recounts the last decade of perhaps the most amazing life in American history. What other president has written forty books, hunted lions, founded a third political party, survived an assassin?s bullet, and explored an unknown river longer than the Rhine?

Colonel Roosevelt begins with a prologue recounting what TR called his ?journey into the Pleistocene??a yearlong safari through East Africa, collecting specimens for the Smithsonian. Some readers will be repulsed by TR?s bloodlust, which this book does not prettify, yet there can be no denying that the Colonel passionately loved and understood every living thing that came his way: The text is rich in quotations from his marvelous nature writing.

Although TR intended to remain out of politics when he returned home in 1910, a fateful decision that spring drew him back into public life. By the end of the summer, in his famous ?New Nationalism? speech, he was the guiding spirit of the Progressive movement, which inspired much of the social agenda of the future New Deal. (TR?s fifth cousin Franklin Delano Roosevelt acknowledged that debt, adding that the Colonel ?was the greatest man I ever knew.?)

Then follows a detailed account of TR?s reluctant yet almost successful campaign for the White House in 1912. But unlike other biographers, Edmund Morris does not treat TR mainly as a politician. This volume gives as much consideration to TR?s literary achievements and epic expedition to Brazil in 1913?1914 as to his fatherhood of six astonishingly different children, his spiritual and aesthetic beliefs, and his eager embrace of other cultures?from Arab and Magyar to German and American Indian. It is impossible to read Colonel Roosevelt and not be awed by the man?s universality. The Colonel himself remarked, ?I have enjoyed life as much as any nine men I know.?

Morris does not hesitate, however, to show how pathologically TR turned upon those who inherited the power he craved?the hapless Taft, the adroit Woodrow Wilson. When Wilson declined to bring the United States into World War I in 1915 and 1916, the Colonel blasted him with some of the worst abuse ever uttered by a former chief executive. Yet even Wilson had to admit that behind the Rooseveltian will to rule lay a winning idealism and decency. ?He is just like a big boy?there is a sweetness about him that you can?t resist.? That makes the story of TR?s last year, when the ?boy? in him died, all the sadder in the telling: the conclusion of a life of Aristotelian grandeur.