This week was more about the dessert than the savory food to be honest, but it’s a really good dessert. I’m going to start with the savory food though for consistency. I did salmon stuffed rice balls for my carb. They are easy to make, pack, and eat so I make them a lot. I had a lot of the oven baked salmon left over, so I brought it on the side as well and drizzled it with some chili-sesame oil, sriracha, salt, and pepper.
I wanted to make sure that I wouldn’t be hungry later, so I also made some sausages shaped like octopus. Protein really helps to keep you full throughout the day. Therefore, I usually try to have it in at least 2 different forms per bento box. Since we are talking about balance, I should also point out that I brought seaweed salad for a fresh veggie flavor.
This brings us to dessert. I made a cat head shaped mochi on a stick with an Odango sauce. To make the mochi, I mixed 50/50 glutinous rice flour with rice flour and just enough water to make it the texture of playdough. I then formed it into cat heads (to be fair, mine are a bit wonky, but I feel like practice helps. My later ones were MUCH better than my initial ones). I then boiled it for just a few minutes before cooling it in an ice bath. I then just skewered them and done.
For the sauce I mixed sugar, soy, mirin, and water until boiling. Then I added a corn starch slurry to thicken it up. Once the sauce was nice and thick, I removed it from the heat and coated my cat sticks with it. For the finishing touch, I added toasted black sesame seeds as their ‘eyes’. I was super happy with how this turned out.
So what do you think? Was the mochi sticks worth going simple on the savory items? Honestly, I liked them and was super happy to show them off at work. Plus, that sauce is ridiculously delicious. I ended up dipping my salmon and rice balls in the extra, lol.