I’m the ultimate caterer at heart. It’s conference time again and as this several thousand strong conference at Singapore Expo usually does not cater lunch for delegates, it was my happy space to prepare a packed lunch for the family. I was vacillating between making a quiche or possibly even lasagna but one of the issues would have been the inability to keep the food hot enough. But inspiration struck in the early hours of the morning. I remembered that I had been to Meidi-ya Japanese supermarket recently and had bought a packet of inari (beancurd skin). Inari is a wonderful way of packaging rice and filling and because it comes as a fillable pocket, it was the perfect package for cauliflower rice. It doesn’t really spill, which is important as cauliflower rice doesn’t have the starchy stickiness of sushi rice.
There are 2 ways of serving inari – either as an open top packet, or you can fold over the opening of the inari and make it a compact closed pouch.
So I had just about an hour this morning to get things done. The inari prep was really fast – it is essentially making cauliflower fried rice and stuffing it into inari skins! I confess I did throw the inari into the freezer after that for a quick chill so that it would be a cold dish for lunch.
I had made food for myself, hubs and kid#1 but kid#1 abandoned us to hang out with his much cooler friends. Thankfully we bumped into some friends who needed lunch and it was really fun sprawling all over the expo floor and picnicking together! I think this was much more fun than packing a sandwich and this met the needs of my picky Asian belly!
Cauliflower Rice Inari
Ingredients
- 1/2 head cauliflower
- 1 packet of inari skins
- 1/3 cup edamame beans
- 1 small carrot, peeled and diced
- 50g luncheon meat (or ham), cubed
- 3 cloves of garlic, minced
- 3/4 tsp salt
- 1/2 tsp black pepper
- 1 tbsp oil
Method
- Cut the cauliflower into florets, then, using a food processor, finely chop the cauliflower into rice-sized bits.
- Heat a skillet up over moderate heat. Put 1 tbsp oil into the skillet.
- Add the garlic and stir fry for 1 minute, then add the carrots and luncheon meat and stir fry another minute.
- Add the cauliflower rice, salt and pepper and stir fry 2-3 minutes till the cauliflower rice is slightly softened but still a little crunchy.
- Throw in the edamame beans and stir through, then take off the heat.
- Place the fried rice into a bowl.
- Carefully open up the pocket space of a piece of inari and spoon the fried cauliflower rice in. Fold the edges of the inari over to make a sealed pouch and place on serving dish.
- Refrigerate until ready to serve.
Still Feeling Peckish 