Bento Business - Green beans and mince

Green beans and mince

Ingredients

200g green beans

100g minced pork

1 tbsp garlic oil (or use olive oil and some garlic puree)

Pinch dried chilli powder

1 1/2 tbsp soy sauce

1/2 tsp sugar

Method

If making for the bento, trim your green beans (or French, or fine...whatever you call them!) into halves or even thirds, so they can be picked up easily by chopsticks.

Boil for about four minutes, then drain and refresh quickly in very cold water. This is to retain their colour. Drain again, and shake off excess water.

Heat the garlic oil in the pan and add the pork, stirring to break up. Now add the chilli pepper and stir well to coat, then add the soy sauce and sugar.

Mix well, ensuring the sugar has dissolved, and then serve the beans with the mince on top.

NOTES:

This recipe was adapted from Harumi's Japanese Cooking. Originally she used fresh chilli and doubled up the quantities. She also made a special garlic and onion oil which is great, but a bit fiddly when there are perfectly good garlic oils already on the market. Check the book out!

You can increase or decrease the chilli powder according to your tastes, just ensure it's all mixed in well or someone will be getting a surprise in their bento box...

This is a really useful recipe to have in your repertoire, because it's very tasty and keeps well in the bento, plus it's great to serve as part of a main course for dinner, too. The addition of chilli powder makes it an unusual Japanese style dish. This will give you around eight mini portions for the bento, or four larger.