With apologies to Dr. Seuss:
B is for bento, the box and its meal.
E is for excited – that's how we feel.
N is for new friends we'll make in the kitchen.
T is for tasty, those dishes we're fixin'.
O is for opening up to the fun
That always erupts when nine cooks cook as one!
The new World Cuisines Cooking Group meets at the end of May for its first cook-together, which means that in a couple of weeks I'll be sending out a grocery list to each of the cooks. It's no secret that we're starting with bento boxes.
In restaurants in the US, menus list bento boxes (usually the "lunch special") according to protein – teriyaki chicken or salmon, grilled beef, etc. In fact, the key element of the bento is rice, so that's where we'll put our cooking energy. In two-plus hours of actual cooking time, we can't make everything from scratch, even with 18 hands at work. For our bentos, we'll make the sushi rice, using a rice cooker method I learned in Sushi American Style by Tracy Griffith, and practice rolling some kappamaki and maybe inside-out rolls, too. We'll do a quick grill of chicken or salmon teriyaki, and add a green salad with ginger dressing. There's always a warm dumpling or yam cake in the bento, and for this we'll take a bit of help from a store-bought product.
I found these chicken gyoza in my favorite Asian grocery store, Super 88 Market in Boston. Super 88, part of a small chain in the greater Boston area, rivals any of the Asian groceries I've visited in New York's Chinatown. The same size as the Stop & Shop next door, and unlike the tiny markets in Boston's Chinatown, Super 88 caters to the culinary needs of the Chinese, Vietnamese, Thai, Laotian, Cambodian and Japanese communities, with a huge produce department that also carries foods common in Caribbean cooking. Condiments and cookware, lobster and lotus root, fresh noodles and dried seaweed – this is one-stop shopping.
At only 30 calories each, and with no MSG, these chicken-and-cabbage gyoza will be the perfect addition to our bento boxes. We can pan-fry them like potstickers, or steam them for a lower-fat option. The group can decide which way to cook the gyoza – the first of many group decisions they'll make in the Ninecooks kitchen.
In the next two weeks I'll put the finishing touches on the recipes, and split the grocery list into (hopefully) equal portions. Each cook brings part of the groceries; that way no one person is burdened with all the food shopping. It's a system that works well for all of the Ninecooks cooking groups. As the host, I provide pantry items and soft drinks.
And, for this cooking adventure, we'll "deflower" my collection of brand new bento boxes!
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