Go ahead, make my Bento

well a huge parcel arrived today from the Japan centre full of food - yum!
I bought a couple of new things to try this time so I'll update you on how that goes....

In the meantime I bought two sushi moulds from them for £1.50 each, I thought they would be similar to the one I have from lake land but they are quite ingenious instead of placing in the nori adding the fillings and compressing the whole thing to make ready to serve sushi this just makes the rice filling. I'm planning to try some sushi left nekkid and some rolled in toasted sesame seeds - watch this space

I couldn't wait to use my hello kitty lunchbox so decided to put the "cupboards of crap" clearout on hold for a day to fill the bento with yummy things. It packs a surprising amount of food in so I made sure I put healthy stuff in it.

Round one....

Three rice balls with egg furikake, one happy, one sad and one all covered in hearts. Some hand rolled sushi with the furikake rice and some QP mayo and loads of cherry tomatoes cause I love them - yummy! You can just see the head of the cute little lion soy sauce bottle sticking out from between the riceballs.

Round two...

Just a simple fruit salad of peaches, plums, apple and red grapes you can see how nicely the baby cutlery fits in - the fork is actually underneath the spoon but you can't see it.

Round three...

I feel I need to say at this point that I actually don't intend to sit down and eat all this food in one go it does contain two meals worth. In the top we have some pita chips from Tesco (bit bland) some dried apricots and goji berries (I tried them today for the first time, they taste like cherry maderia cake, how odd) some edamame, a pot of jelly belly beans a triangle of laughing cow cheese and some hummus in a cake case.

Cake cases are a great way of separating items in your box. You can buy reuseable silicone ones and disposable ones with Hello kitty etc on but a fairy cake case works just as well but be careful not to put
anything too moist in and also I would recommend that you use it in a lunch box that carries upright like this one does.

If you are like me once you get started with bento it becomes a bit of an addiction. As pleasing as it is to open your lunch and see kawaii (cute) soy sauce bottles and food picks the little fellas need somewhere to hang out when they are not servicing your lunch.

Originally I chucked everything in a big biscuit tin which worked fine at first until I spotted this while looking for a plaster at work today

Its an old plaster box and when I opened it up to look for a plaster it was empty but looked like this inside...

"Ping" went a lightbulb and drip went the blood from my finger "a-ha!" thinks I, this could be put to bento use...

So I did and this is what happened

Everything is tidy now yay! Well tidy for now until I buy MORE bento related stuff!

Onigiri are iterally rice balls although they can come in many shapes such as triangles, stars, rabbits and flowers. They can be formed by hand or using a mould I bought my moulds from E-bay at quite a reasonable price.

Onigiri can be plain or filled and can be coated in sesame, nori or left "naked". They can be filled with many fillings - basically whatever you want goes! The rice can be plain or seasoned, I often make onigiri when I am making sushi so my rice is often seasoned. On the whole I tend not to make them as I cant eat them without falling apart but today I decided to play with some new tools I got and make some.

My new toys are some nori cutters and onigiri molds.

The cutters are designed to cut shapes out of sheets of nori for sushi which can then be used to decorate rice balls.

Here is a happy star!

Bless, ain't he a cutie pie. I also made an unhappy heart, not because I'm sad but because he knew he was going to be eaten first ha ha ha!

You can also reverse the technique and use the nori that is left over as a design. For all you Dragon quest fans here is an onigiri with a happy little slime on.

By the way my onigiri are speckly because I mixed some egg furikake through the rice before moulding them

I keep on the lookout for items that I can use in my bento box without having to buy them abroad. Today I had two finds.

Firstly this Dora the explorer lunchbox. Its not very big so I think I'll keep it for small snacks or light lunches but it only cost 99p and came filled with sweets yay! Unfortunately I had to give these away as they wern't veggie friendly boo!

I also found some baby cutlery with a "cars" design on, they are the perfect size for fitting inside a bento box and again only 99p - bargain!

I decided to treat myself to a new bento box from ebay I'd had my eye on it for a while but it was a bit overpriced. I found one from a seller that I had used before at a great price so i pressed that button! It came today in all its pinkness yay!

I also got some other bento accessories so I'll make a nice lunch tomorrow - well I'll try, don't shout at me if I don't...

Isn't it lovely! You can't see it terrible well but kitty on the lid has a sparkly outline its quite a good size I'm really looking forwards to using it and the best bit is it stacks together like a tiffin box so you dont have to worry about it getting thrown around in your bag.

I'm a bit of a hoarder. I think if I didn't keep a lid on it I would end up with one of those houses like you see on "how clean is your house". My main problem is supermarket special offers I have cupboards full of things that were half price of buy one get one free or two for... I'm on an economy drive at the minute as I'm out of work in two weeks so I decided to start using the stuff in the cupboards to make my lunches so apologies due for the uninspiring lunches for the next or so...

Anyhoo, onto the food yum!

In this lunch we have Ainsley Harriott brand "tomato tango" couscous with some Asda vegetarian meatballs cut up over the top. In the larger section there is some Brazil nuts, Jelly belly beans, an Organix carrot cake toddler bar, some dried Apricots, some triple berry shredded wheat and a triangle of laughing cow cheese.

I feel quite virtuous today everything came from the cupboards or fridge but I'm missing the fresh fruit, veggies and sushi. I gotta get through those cupboards of crap though.....

I've been on a bit of a sushi kick at the minute, it heps me relax because you can't rush making it - I need all the relaxing I can get at the minute...

Anyhoo, I thought I'd make some sushi and post the recipes for those of you who want the sushi without the fishi.

From left to right we have....

Wasabi and spring onion maki
Egg, spring onion and sesame futomaki
A small bottle of soy sauce
Tamago nigiri
inari

and it was yummy....

This is a wasabi futomaki. Its rice, wasabi and QP mayo but boy does it pack a punch. If you have never tried wasabi its hot! It isn't hot in the way that chilli is - it won't leave your mouth burning instead it hits you in the sinuses giving them the gastronomical equivalent of a pipe cleaner down them. It subsides within fifteen seconds leaving you decidedly more awake!

This is my very favouritest type of sushi. I guess it would be called something like "Goma neki tamago futomaki". Its made with the large mould from my Sushi maker and its about the size of half a bar of soap. I really wouldn't like to try this without my maker as I think if you hand roll it everything would escape out of the sides. Top make it place a layer of rice down on your nori and slice one spring onion lengthways into thin strips, lay this on the rice. Take a tbsp of sesame seeds and place in a small pan swirl over a high heat until they turn golden then sprinkle over the spring onion (careful they leak hot oil) squeeze over some QP mayo and top with a slice of Tamago so it fits like a carpet, top with more rice and roll/finish off. In my picture the egg is near the top - no reason I just forgot to put the egg on top of the sesame seeds - doh!