Since shaping rice went so well in my Totoro bento box, I decided to try the technique again in this bento box. Also, I went to Daiso and got a few helpful tools for bento making. I got some shaped cookie cutters: hedgehog (can you tell I like these yet), bears, and hearts; plus I got a seaweed punch to make faces out of nori and a sushi roll roller. I’m really excited to try them all out.
I tried a slightly harder shape this time, A rabbit face. This doesn’t sound harder, but the long ears actually make it more prone to breaking apart. I used the saran wrap trick again to shape the head. Once that was done, I used the small heart cookie cutter to cut hearts from a red bell pepper and used two of those to give the bunny a bow. Finally, I got to use my new seaweed punch to make a face for my bunny. Though, I think the features might be a bit small for how large I made the head. Overall, I’m really happy with my bunny bento though.
Next, I decided to make a sushi roll with my new roller device. It’It’s a nori sheet on the outside, sushi rice on the inside, and stuffed with cucumber, avocado, and BBQ eel. It actually worked quite well, but contained very little eel for protein, so I made some salmon skewers to up the protein level.
The salmon skewers were made from the salmon fillet. I cut it into chunks and marinated those in miso, sake, mirin, and soy sauce for 20-30 minutes. After marinating, I skewered the chunks and broiled them for 10 minutes. I topped with with toasted black sesame seeds; the results were very delicious. It’s a recipe I’ll definitely keep in my back pocket.
Finally, I wanted some veggies in my box. So I used my new bear and hedgehog cookie cutters to cut the bell peppers into shapes, I also boiled some frozen edamame, and finally made some miso-sesame green beans. For the green beans, I sauteed the green beans for a bit; while that was going, I mixed miso, mirin, soy, toasted black sesame seeds, and sesame oil. Once the green beans were close to cooked, I added the miso mixture and cooked it down. I also got a cute cupcake wrapper to keep them in.
And of course, you can’t forget dessert. This week, I just went for some cute candies I found at the Asian market. They are the perfect size to not overdo the sugar but get a sweet taste at the end of the meal.
Overall I was pleased with this bento. I was full until the end of the day, and the miso really brought a nice umami flavor. Plus, I still felt like I got a good dose of adorable in the lunch. Though in the future, I may use less rice, it was quite a bit at the end of the day.