OBENTO: AN EASY JAPANESE DINNER TO ENJOY AT HOME

Today's hectic pace is an important reason for the growing popularity of bringing home store-bought foods that are ready to eat. Even when they taste great, most of these practical dishes do not look like much. The Japanese obento offers ideas for ways of presenting these simple, familiar foods, including roast chicken and a green salad, in a new way.

An obento is a complete meal which the Japanese serve in a kind of covered container called a bento box. Immensely popular, these self-contained meals are featured in restaurants here in the U.S. as well as in Japan.

Restaurants use elegant lacquered bento boxes or trays for serving the obento. Japanese mothers use simpler, portable containers for obento lunches their children take to school. Takeaway obento in disposable boxes are also common. They are sold everywhere in Japan, from food stores to train stations. These obento-to-go come in a paper box or compartmentalized aluminum tray. The food in them may not be arranged as elaborately as in restaurants, but it is usually cleverly presented.

Without a bento box, and using familiar dishes, you can present your own obento meal at home, arranging the elements nicely on a large dinner plate.

For example, here is a bento meal composed of barbecued roast chicken breast, rice, a green salad, and a Japanese-style ratatouille. It marries the Asian practice of eating for health with their concern for sensory pleasure, including a skinned piece of chicken, a haystack of bright green salad, a cylinder of white rice, and mound of ratatouille laced with red peppers, all artfully placed. The dressed salad is pungent and crisp, the rice is soft and velvety, and the ratatouille a complex-tasting and moist accompaniment to the firm texture and mild-flavor of the chicken.

Serve this bento meal warm, except for the salad, or present it all at room temperature.

JAPANESE-STYLE RATATOUILLE

1 tablespoon peanut oil
1 small onion, halved and cut into 1/2-inch crescents (1 cup)
1 medium red pepper, seeded and cut into 1/2-inch strips
1 garlic clove minced
1 medium Japanese eggplant, cut diagonally into 1/2-inch slices, about 2 cups
6 to 8 shiitake mushrooms, stemmed, and cut into 1/2-inch strips (note)
1 small zucchini, cut into 1/2-inch half-moon slices
1/4 cup vegetable broth, or water
2 tablespoons tomato paste
1 tablespoon reduced sodium soy sauce

In a large skillet, heat the oil over medium-high heat. Saute the onion, red pepper, and garlic for 2 minutes. Add the eggplant and saute 1 minute. Add the mushrooms and zucchini, and saute 2 minutes.

Add the broth, or water, tomato paste, and soy sauce, stirring until the paste is dissolved. Reduce the heat and cook until the vegetables are tender but hold their shape, about 5 minutes. Set aside. (The ratatouille can be made 1 day ahead. Place it in a tightly covered container, and refrigerate.)

Each of the six servings of ratatouille contains 58 calories and 2 grams of fat.

Note: If using dried mushrooms, soak them in warm tap water until soft.

TO ASSEMBLE THE BENTO PLATE:

Cook 3/4 cup long-grain white rice in 1 1/2 cups salted water. Mix 3 chopped scallions (green part only) into the pot of warm rice, along with 3-4 drops toasted sesame oil. Press the rice into 4 six-ounce glass custard cups. Unmold this cup of rice at the 12 o'clock position on each of four dinner plates.

Dress 3 cups baby salad greens, or mesclun. To dress the greens, whisk together a tablespoon lime juice, 1 teaspoon of olive oil, and a pinch of sugar. Toss with baby salad greens and set aside.

Place a quarter breast of roasted chicken, skinned, at 6 o'clock on each plate. (If you prefer, roast two whole chicken breast halves with ribs, then cut each in half, crosswise.)

Arrange the ratatouille in a mound at 9 o'clock and the salad opposite, at 3 o'clock. In the center, place a lemon slice, slit from the center to one edge and twisted in a spiral.

Source: Dana Jacobi for the American Institute for Cancer Research