I admit that this is barely a recipe at all, unless you don't know how to make scrambled eggs. It is essentially a 1 egg tamagoyaki for people in a hurry. Sure, a folded tamagoyaki only takes a few minutes to make, but sometimes even those few minutes can't be spared.

So, here's a scrambled egg that is perfect for bentos. I've added a little chopped green onion (left over from dinner the night before) for variety, but you could omit that if you're in a really big hurry. To keep the scrambled egg neat and tidy, it's packed in a silicone cupcake liner.

Recipe: Scrambled egg with green onion, or a deconstructed 1-egg tamagoyaki

This makes one portion, and is about 80 - 120 calories depending on how much oil is in the pan. (You could use a cooking spray or a non-stick pan for minimal additional calories.)

• 1 ‘large’ egg
• 1 tsp. soy sauce (regular or light-colored; here I used regular, which makes the eggs a bit brown in color)
• A pinch of sugar
• 1 Tbs. or so of finely chopped green onion
• Black pepper to taste
• A little oil for cooking, or cooking spray

Start heating up a small non-stick frying pan over high heat. Mix all the ingredients together well. Add a little oil to the pan, or spray with cooking spray.

Pour in the eggs, and stir around rapidly to make scrambled eggs. You can either stop when they are still a bit moist, or keep cooking until the egg forms little globules, in which case it becomes more like soboro or iri tamago than scrambled eggs. In this case, I stopped at the scrambled egg stage - not too runny but still moist enough to hold together. (The residual heat of the egg will continue to cook it a bit more after you take it out of the pan, so there's no need to worry about safety provided you're using fresh eggs.)

Put the scrambled egg in a silicone cupcake liner or bento divider, and press lightly on top of the egg and around it to make it neat. (Optional, but it does help to make your bento box look more attractive in the end). Let cool completely before packing into your bento box.

Variations

You can add all kinds of things instead of, or in addition to, the chopped green onion. Try things like:

• furikake you have on hand
• toasted sesame seeds
• any leftover cooked vegetables, finely chopped
• chirimenjako (tiny semi-dried fish)
• crumbled nori
• a little bit of tuna, well drained and flaked
• chopped up ham or other cooked meat, or basic meat soboro