Soba Salad Round Bento

Cold soba salad is typically a warm weather food, and I know it's late September - the first day of Fall, in fact - but it still feels like summer around here. And I just realized I forgot to make soba salad at all this past summer -- so here it is! I used cha soba (it looks pale green and has a faint tea flavor), and topped with chopped romaine (my favorite salad green these days), julienned carrots and cucumbers, sliced grape tomatoes, and char siu. Sprinkled with sesame seeds and packed with a little soy-ginger dressing in the little yellow container this bento is ready to eat. I actually put the dressing container in the main part on top of the soba -- the top tier presses down on it just enough to keep it from moving around and spilled open. And if it does spill, it will spill on the salad. Top tier holds sliced plum and a few strawberries. All very refreshing on a warm summery day.

Penne Pasta Bolognese Bento

Penne Pasta Bolognese Bento, a photo by sherimiya ♥ on Flickr.

Last time I made bolognese (here) I showed you TinySprite's bento. This time I'll show you MisterMan's version. It's the same, except he gets regular wheat pasta; this penne is made with tomato and carrot puree so it looks orange. I lay the pasta on a bed of lettuce, then spoon the sauce over, and top with parmesan and a few steamed Okinawan sweet potato cut into star shapes. In the upper tier of this cool EcoLunchBox he gets Greek yogurt with pumpkin seeds and wheat germ, and the usual fruit and veggies to the side (carrots, broccoli, strawberries and grapes).

Making the soba noodles

You should cook soba (buckwheat) noodles for only 4 minutes, then rinse quickly in cold water. They should be nice and slippery, and kind of al dente.

You can blanch a whole bunch of spinach in boiling water for less than a minute, and it will shrink down to a tiny log that you can smush in your palm! Try to get all the water out. Keep it in this log form so that it will be easy to chop roughly.

You can use premade sauce, but it's just as easy to make your own. Here is what I put in my sauce: rice vinegar, mirin, shoyu, lime juice, sesame oil and grated ginger. It's tangy and fresh. You can toss everything together with the noodles, or you can arrange the spinach and green onion (and surimi) on top for a beautiful presentation, and then drizzle the sauce.