Dry Curry Rainbow Bento

Dry Curry Bento, a photo by sherimiya ♥ on Flickr.

Okay, there isn't really a rainbow in here, but it's pretty cheerfully colorful! I packed MisterMan's dry curry in his metal "apple" shaped bento bowl, which I love. It's good for donburi type rice bowl meals such as this one: I put some mixed black rice (with millet and amaranth) on the bottom, and then scooped some dry curry on top. Dry curry is great for bento because there isn't a lot of soup or gravy to get soggy or leak out. And since this box isn't leakproof, it would have been a concern. I made this dry curry by browning ground meat and sauteeing a mix of diced vegetables such as carrots, bell peppers, celery, garlic and onion - I also added potatoes, zucchini and corn - then sprinkling 1-2T curry to the ingredients to release the aromatics. I added about 1/2C water and 2T tonkatsu sauce, stirred and simmered until well absorbed and "dry." If it's too strong you can add applesauce to sweeten it up, which is what I did. Or you can add ketchup. The top tier of this cute bowl contains cara cara oranges, strawberries, grapes, blackberries and blueberries. And a tomato and a couple slivers of mandarinquat. I sent this lunch to school at room temperature, but it's also a great candidate for a thermal jar, to ensure a hot curry meal on a cool winter day.
Added to What's For Lunch.

Dry Curry Bento

Dry Curry Bento, originally uploaded by sherimiya ♥.

I made dry curry for today's bento, using ground turkey and a bunch of vegetables that I happened to have on hand already: onion, carrot, orange / yellow / red mini sweet peppers, peas, and also some new potatoes. I chopped everything up finely (except the peas) before adding them to the browned meat. When everything was tender I added the curry mixture, which included curry powder, shoyu, mirin, and sake. And a bit of water. Stir in and cook until dry. The nice thing about dry curry is that since it is "dry", it is a good choice for bento -- there is no thick sauce to get all over everything.

In this bento, I scooped the dry curry on top of fresh rice. In the next section I put some roasted baby bok choy, and the final 2 sections include red grapes, a purple carrot skewer, a strawberry and a half plum. Nope, it's not summer here yet; it's a Chilean plum...but I couldn't resist. My own apricot tree is nearing full bloom, and I'm dreaming of fresh tree-ripe fruit in the coming months, hopefully. Our tree is very popular with the neighborhood birds and squirrels, so it'll be a battle to get our share.

We had a great, sunny day today, which I spent hanging out in the garden with TinySprite, but tomorrow calls for more rain :( Come on, Spring!