Bento # 134 - Cheesy Baked Pasta

Thanks everyone for your prayers and good wishes for baby Amelia. So far, reports are well. She had a hole in the heart, but it mended by itself (Praise God!). Have yet to check her eyesight and hearing. She has opened her eyes, so we are hopeful.

Anyway, I'm taking a break from studying, erm, helping Girlet revise for exam to post outstanding bentos. It was an easy bento from (yup, still) Feb. The telltale item was the lunchsheets which expired early March.

This bento consisted of baked pasta (made individual portion while making dinner). I decorated the pasta with cutout cheese (obviously it would melt, which is all the better for the pasta). There were nuggets under the deepfried lotus root (which Girlet complained had turned limped by recess), grapes, cherry tomatoes and flower lunchsheets.

To my dear Janet who requested for the 'recipe'. Well, as usual, I don't have fixed recipe, just by estimation, and what's available. But this baked pasta is ridiculously easy to make.

1) Boil your fav pasta shape (I used shells here, but have used elbow macaroni and spirals).

2) Meanwhile brown some minced beef (I used a small pack of Aust Weight Watchers from supermkt) and chopped onions, then pour in a can of tomatoes, some water, a dash of oregano, salt & pepper to taste. Let simmer and thicken.

3) In an oven-safe dish, pour in half the cooked pasta, layered with half the meat sauce and plenty of cheese, then repeat the same layers.

4) Make (and later freeze) individual portions for bento.

5) Then dump into preheated oven for 20 - 30 mins (I used 180`C as my fan forced oven is rather hot). Use higher 190`C if yours is not.

Note: For cheese, I put cheddar & a little powdered parmesan in the middle, and topped with mozzarella as my kids love the cheese to be really gooey. But you can put in any processed cheese you like.

Easy-peasy and less work than fried rice!!

Baked Chicken Nuggets

Oh my, time has flown. I made this two weeks ago. I don't usually follow recipes exactly. Just put bits together according to what I have on hand or thought interesting. For this, I combined the recipes from allrecipes, here and youtube, forgot link.

I used chicken breast meat, because too lazy to debone the drumstick. However, I did pound (or whatever the correct word is) on the breast meat to tenderize it. Then I used metal cookie cutters to mark the outline (weren't sharp enough to cut through the meat) and cut with kitchen scissors. The leftover bits were left as strips and cooked the same way. (Not pictured here cos not pretty *_*)

I mixed plain flour with powdered parmesan cheese and pepper. Then put the flour mixture, beaten egg and crushed cornflakes onto their respective plates, arranging them in an assembly line. First the meat was rolled in the flour mixture, then dipped into egg, and covered with the crushed cornflakes. Then baked in the oven at 190*C for 15 minutes. And the results were healthful, crunchy chicken nuggets. The meat was tender but a tad dry. But the crunchiness made up for it.

The older kids had a few pieces each. Fussy babylet came to admire the results but refused to try. She ended up with milk for dinner again. She's already 27 months - old enough for "If you don't eat dinner, you can jolly well starve" routine yet?

Another question. Besides dinosaur nuggets from NTUC on my Singapore shopping list, what other nuggets to add?

How-to : Make flower egg/ham

To Lisa: Sorry for the late reply. I've been busy the whole day. Anyway, how I made the flower egg may not be the proper way. Like your dumpling sandwich, I saw the pic, and did it my way. Please feel free to improve on it.

First, beat the egg with salt and pepper added (you may want to add milk, suspect Japanese add Mirin and sugar).

Fry paper thin. I used a rectangular pan.

Lay the piece of egg flat on chopping board and make parallel slits about 1/4 inch apart in the middle of the egg (not all the way through). If you make long slits, the effect will be like mine, the 'petals' will open up wider. I didn't have time to fry an egg, so am showing you pics using ham instead.

Fold the egg/ham in half, perpendicular to the slits. I found out the hard way that if I cut after folding the ham, the ham tend to break.

Roll the egg/ham up and secure with a toothpick. For girlet's bento, I left out the toothpick, just wedge it tightly among other food so it doesn't unravel.

You probably would want to experiment with wider/narrower slits, longer/shorter slits, thicker/thinner egg, all of which will affect the final product.