Bento Tricolour Pesto Pasta

Today's bento is a tricolour bento made with bow-tie pasta (also known as Farfalle) laced with pesto sauce. I added red capsicum and golden yellow zucchini for the extra colour and taste.

Tricolour bento with Pesto Farfalle Capsicum and Golden Zuccini

The golden yellow zucchini and the red capsicum were prepared together with the farfalle pasta and pesto sauce as one-dish. When I was packing this tricolour bento, I set aside the red capsicum and yellow zucchini so that it looks bright and colourful. Have a bright and colourful Friday too and I hope you like this tricolour pesto pasta bento!

Recipe: Chicken Pesto Pasta Salad

Recipe: Chicken Pesto Pasta Salad

This recipe sounds like a mouthful: Chicken Pesto Pasta Salad but it's really simple and easy to make.

Ingredients:
-Chicken fillet (1 slab of about 150grams)
-Mushrooms (about 200grams)
-Penne Pasta (about 2 handfuls)
-Red capsicium pepper
-Pesto sauce
-Cooking oil

How to:
Boil some water in a saucepan. Pour some cooking oil into the boiling water (this will prevent the pasta from sticking onto each other later on). Put in the penne pasta and let it cook.
In the meantime, prepare the rest of the ingredients.
Clean and slice the chicken fillet. Leave aside.
Remove dirt from mushrooms with a damp paper towel and sliced the mushroom.
Dice the red peppers into small 1cm cubes.

Heat a teaspoon of cooking oil into a frying pan. Once the oil is hot enough, add in the chicken slices. Stir-fry quickly till chicken is pink and almost cooked. Add in the mushroom and red pepper. Once the chicken is thoroughly cooked, turn off the heat and let it cool.

Once the pasta is cooked, remove from heat and run it under cold water from the tap. This will stop the cooking process, making the pasta a little more al dente (chewy, bouncy, less soggy). Remove pasta from cold water and place it in a mixing bowl. Add in all the ingredients from the frying pan and stir in some pesto sauce. Keep tasting and adding the pesto sauce until you are satisfied with the taste. Sprinkly some salt and pepper for that extra ooomph.

Bento Idea: Musical Babybel

It had been a whole week of craziness of hiding in our cave for both Mr Bear and me. We were down with a bad bout of flu and had been hibernating the whole time. Now we are both feeling better and since stuffs had been left un-done for the whole week, it DOES really feel as though I have a lot to do/catch up on...

I don't know if its a world-wide thing or not, but I do notice a lot of my friends being sick as well last week. Its strange because all these friends come from different parts of the world ( Europe, United States, Asia,  Australia etc) and thus they probably didn't get it directly from each other. More like a coincidence I think.

Let's begin with something easy.

Bento idea: Musical babybel

- mini babybel
- nori for the musical notes
- green grapes
- Leftover chicken pesto pasta salad (click here for recipe)

How I did the mini babybel:
First, unwrapped the red cellophane wrapper from the mini babybel. Using a round bottlecap, I make a slight impression on the red wax. This serves as a rough guide for the circle. You can also trace out the circle with a sharp toothpick. Next I cut out the wax, leaving a circle of cheese exposed. If you see this picture carefully, you would have seen that I left the little paper strip intact. All mini babybels have this paper strip to make removing the red wax easier. I left it on, so that its easier for me to remove the rest of the red wax just before I eat it. If you like, you can always cut it through and remove the paper strip completely.

 

PS: Rio, this post is dedicated for you. Thanks for popping by my blog! :D