Elegant Picnic Bento

Yesterday I received my newest bento box from CasaBento. I didn't actually expect the bento box to be THAT gorgeous...! When I saw the bento box in CasaBento's site, I thought it looked nice, but I only thought of that as one of many nice bento boxes and that it was nothing so special. I decided to get this bento box with Ikebana design because I was simply looking for another design and shape to add to my bento box collection. What I received yesterday was beyond my expectation. You can feel the quality just by looking at it. By the way, I am not exaggerating at the moment and I don't praise this new bento box so much just because CasaBento is my sponsor, when I am not so happy with one of their products, I'll write about it too ;).

Just look at this beauty...!

It's got plastic lids to cover each of the bento container.

This bento box is also microwave and dishwasher safe, but you should remove the plastic lids before you put the bento box in the microwave.

As some of you might have known, CasaBento is a French-based online bento- supplies shop. I had seen CasaBento logo in some bento-related sites for some time, but I never thought about buying anything there, because I was just not used to buy anything online which was not from Amazon. I usually buy my books from Amazon and have always found their service reliable, this was also the reason which led me to buy my first bento box via Amazon. I was actually totally happy with my purchase there and even thought that the box was rather expensive but still quite reasonably-priced. But then, because I couldn't find more interesting bento boxes to buy from Amazon, I started to look around in other online shops and I was especially looking for Europe-based online shops to have less expensive shipping cost. Suddenly I remembered CasaBento again and went to their site and browsed their products. Then I saw my first bento box there and got quite annoyed, because I noticed that the exact bento box which I bought in Amazon was twice more expensive than the one in CasaBento...! Not very nice, but one lesson learned was, 'always compare prices' ;).

This was our dinner - very simple duck fried rice topped with slices of cucumber and cheese sakura blossoms. Next to the fried rice you can see one ham rose (I intend to do a tutorial on this in about one week's time when I have more free time), a few pieces of edamame, three pieces of blanched baby carrots, one cherry tomato, one piece of radish and lettuce.

The top box is filled with several pieces of grapes and strawberries, lettuce border, two pieces of mini Cordon Bleu, two ham roses and one slice of tamagoyaki.

Simple Duck Fried Rice - serves 2

• 1 cup cooked rice (better when one day old)
• 2 tablespoons olive oil
• 100 grams roasted duck breast, cut into cubes (I like buying pre-made duck breast to save time)
• 2 tablespoons fish sauce
• 2 tablespoons oyster sauce
• 1 tablespoon soy sauce
• 1/2 teaspoon white pepper
• 1 egg
• 2 -3 tablespoons chopped green onions

Instructions:

• Heat up your wok to high. Add 2 tbs oil.
• Add duck breast and fish sauce and stir fry for 1 minute.
• Quickly toss in the rice, oyster sauce and sweet soy sauce. Stir fry for another 1 minute.
• Push rice to one side of the wok and make scrambled egg on the other side.
• Mix rice and scrambled egg well.
• Add chopped green onions and white pepper and stir well before serving.

This fried rice is super simple because it doesn't use garlic or shallots. There are times when I am even too lazy to peel and mince garlic/shallots and this afternoon is one of those days ;). I can nevertheless guarantee that this fried rice still tastes super good! Chopped green onions can compensate the missing garlic...!