I woke up late today after having pulled an almost-all nighter. Thankfully, I had a leftover bento kinda planned so I was able to put one together even if we were running late. While buying lunch instead of bento-ing is always an option, my funds are running low at the moment. I really need to force myself to bento this week, as (1) we have loads of food at home, (2) it might spoil, (3) I’m running low on cash, & (4) I had a minor scrape with my mom’s car last Saturday so I’ll need money for a paint job.

Contents:
• cherry tomatoes
• grapes
• celery sticks
• corn kernels
• lengua
• rice

Lengua is Spanish for tongue! And no, it’s not disgusting. When prepared well, lengua has a velvety texture that practically melts in your mouth. One common way of cooking beef lengua is in a creamy mushroom-based sauce that has slices of Champignon mushrooms in it. Lengua epitomizes slow cooking. It takes hours of boiling to soften the normally tough tongue but take just one bite and you know it’s worth the trouble.

As much as I’d love to share the recipe, we bought this serving of lengua already cooked from the Salcedo Saturday Market, a weekly flea market of sorts for food lovers from all over. We froze it upon getting home, then reheated for dinner last night. It was fantastic. Happily, it survived the trip to work—I was worried that the cream might spoil—for a delicious, satisfying lunch.

Originally posted at:
http://kitchencow.livejournal.com/32818.html
http://community.livejournal.com/bentolunch/807415.html

This entry was posted on Monday, March 26th, 2007 at 9:57 am and is filed under bento. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.