experimenting with dashi

gyudon

tamagoyaki, tomato broccoli bake, shrimp, teriyaki sauce

the gyudon recipe is from the donburi book i bought at epcot. it wuz my first time cooking with dashi, which wuz a successful experiment. aunty momo gave me these small packets of dashi mix (8g) with no instructions. i just assumed each packet makes 2 cups. it wuz a good guess cuz shmantz really liked the gyudon. the shire doesn't sell shirataki, so i used long rice noodles instead. they come in 6oz packages with three bundles. i cooked two of the bundles, but only used one and a half bundles for the gyudon (i set aside half a bundle for tomorrow's recipe). the last bundle is for next week's obento. can you guess what i'm going to make?

the tamagoyaki is just plain egg with a pinch of salt. we're not fans of adding dashi or sugar to that. i just cooked the shrimp in lemon and salt. nothing fancy.

the tomato broccoli bake came from the ajinomoto site (see my obento resources link). just toss the tomatoes and broccoli in salt, put it in a baking cup, drizzle over kewpie mayo, sprinkle on some cheese, and pop it in the toaster oven for 5 minutes. the ajinomoto site is amazing! on the right side of the bento page, there is something called an "obento simulation book". you should be able to identify it since it is in katakana, but they also have an english title over it just in case. whenever i read it, i hear dad saying it in japanese and it makes me laugh. the simulation book is fun to play with, and gives you a variety of bento to make. but the most useful thing i found is that the site gives you a new menu everyday (in picture form) of what to put in your bento. and if you click on the picture, it'll take you to the recipe. there are a ton of sample bento to look at too! papa ni, kizzu ni. heehee.