Boxed lunch [お弁当]

Before there was Covid-19, workshops and seminars typically came accompanied by catering, and one of the marks of a good event was the sensibility of the event manager in selecting a good caterer (or at least that was how ravenous students attempting to save money while eating good tend to hang around recruitment talks meant for the graduating class decide if certain recruitment talks were worth staying back after school hours to attend for).

This caterer was one of those I remembered staying back for, even though I was nowhere near graduating.  But a meal saved is a meal saved, right?

Before the world can emerge from Covid-19, laid out buffet spreads from those days are still frowned upon for workshops and seminars.  So people queued up to collect their mealboxes during breaktimes and missed scoping out warm food from metal containers with little flames beneath them.  A nice curry always tastes better warm than lukewarm or cold, no?

So this boxed lunch came from one of the better caterers (and obviously used to be pricier since only the bigger consulting firms engaged them for the recruitment talks.  Smaller and less well-known companies chose lesser known caterers.)

There was fried rice accompanied by two pieces of stuffed dough fritters, two deep fried cereal prawns, lemongrass-flavored curry chicken and greens.

At last a caterer that uses proper full long grain rice.  There were no broken grains and the rice wasn't overcooked and mushy unlike how some other caterers do it.  The rice was flavored and I think it supposed to be fried rice, but it didn't have enough eggs to coat the rice grains.  Nevertheless, I was just happy to see and eat long grain rice that wasn't broken or chipped or overcooked.

The chicken was interesting for it.  Although it was cooked with curry paste, it wasn't spiced and I could taste and smell the fragrance of the spices used, most notably the lemongrass and rempah.  I wish more cooks could offer a version of their food without adding the usual amount of chilli and allow more people to enjoy the fragrance and taste of the spices they use in their food.  I can't understand the logic of spending so much effort searching for the perfect combination of spice mix, blending and pounding the spices and all that people could taste was just the numbness in their mouths from the chillis and peppercorns.

And one great thing for me (at least) from this boxed lunch was that there wasn't a layer of oil sitting at the bottom of the box when I finished eating.  Oh, and I didn't feel thirsty after that.