Bento #2

::: Today's bento menu :::
Stir fried pork with ginger and spring onions （姜葱炒肉）
Baby xiao-bai-cai （小白菜）
Rice balls with crispy fried anchovies

Here's some basic rules for packing bentos which I have read. The whole bento is made up of 6 parts, comprising of 3 parts carbs, 2 parts veggies and 1 part protein. So if you stick to this composition, you would have a well balanced diet. And to make the bento visually exciting, just make sure that you have 5 colours in the box: red, yellow, green, black and white. Guess I've to work on the visual aspect of my bentos.

5 seems to be a very important number in Japanese cooking. According to Elizabeth Andoh's Washoku, there are 5 principles of washoku. 5 colours, 5 tastes, 5 ways of cooking, 5 senses and 5 outlooks (religious-wise). I find this book to be very interesting for its discussion of these principles and also instruction on how to take short-cuts to some of the lengthy preparation processes in certain recipes.

More on bentos in the next post ...