Onigiri Bento in pink

If you are not Japanese but love Anime or Manga you probably were introduced to bento's and onigiri's in this way. This is how i was introduced to them and always had wanted to make my own. They are really easy and now I make them all the time.

I've showed many traditional square, rectangle and even circle shaped bento's before. This time i want to show my cute onigiri bento. These are shaped much different from my other ones. I got this cute pink one at a store in Seattle, Washington called Daiso. You can buy their stuff online at
Daiso Online
They have all sorts of cute Japanese things for decent price and ship to all over the us. Granted much cheaper if you find an actual store. I think I got this bento for a buck, where online they are about $18.

The little sauce bottle next to it is full of soy sauce. Its convenient non messy way to bring it. I squirt a little soy sauce on my rice balls as I'm eating them for more flavor. The top of the bento is a big domed shape.
This way your rice balls wont get smushed.

You can see i've got two medium sized triangle onigiris sitting on the platform the lid goes over. I also have them resting on some extra seaweed. I got this flavored sea weed squares at Uwajimaya

You could find these at most asian supermarkets. I'm not sure what flavor these ones are but they are crisp with a nice salty seasoning. I like to put extra on my rice ball for a crunchy texture on the outside.
It's also popular to season the outside of the rice balls with Furikake flakes like These.

Then the little part the Onigiri's rest on comes off and there is a little compartment for some more snacks or food to go with them. I put some small strawberries in for a sweet addition to my salty lunch.

Onigiri are a great lunch or snack. They are healthy, tasty and best of all very easy to transport. They hold shape well and can be eaten quickly with no mess, no need to be heated. You can also put fillings inside. Popular fillings are tuna and red bean paste. I have mine made plane with no filling.
It's best to use shortgrain rice because it's softer and holds together better then long or medium grain ones. If you're desperate you can use long grain it will taste good your rice balls just might fall apart since its not as sticky.
The best recipe for sushi rice for making rice balls i got here. I do it exactly like she directs except i use rice vinegar instead of white vinegar cause i adore the flavor of it. I make a whole bunch at a time and then keep them in a glass flat container with lid in my fridge. Then just grab them as i get hungry or am making lunches.

Chicken Mulligatawny Steam Buns

Have you seen Anna the Reds Bento blog? She is absolutely amazing. I could stare at her creations all day long. One of the recipes of hers that I swear by is her steamed pork buns.
I've tried them before with beef and pork and both times were a slam dunk. This time I decided to take photo's to show you how they are made. You can get the recipe HERE.
I prefer the yeast version dough its more moist and fluffy and has a great texture.

For this set I decided to get creative and make a chicken filling based loosely on the flavors of chicken mulligatawny soup.
Filling ingredients are :
shredded chicken
garlic
mushrooms
cabbage
2 small organic apples very finelly chopped
I put all these into my processor and zapped them so it has a very fine texture

I also did 1 portion of sauce to doubled dough and filling on the recipe.
The last time I made these I felt the sauce was a little to strong and overpowered the flavors of the filling. This portion was perfect for us and had the best flavor.

I made my filling while the dough was rising and then left both with covered talls until the dough was ready.

You cut your dough into portions I roll up a piece in my hand into a ball then lay it on the cutting board or counter and poud it with the lower palm of my hand until you have a flat circle.

Put about a table spoon of filling, or as much as you want in the center of your flattened circle.
You can be somewhat liberal with it because you do stretch the dough over it.

Then gently tug up the outer edge of the circle up and around the filling making a little pocket.

Once all the outer edge is up grab it and pinch the sides together. I do it from two direction so that you is extra secure. This will hold your filling inside.

You then using your hands round it into nice little bun ball shapes. I like to place mine with the pinched edge down. Don't they look fabulous! (don't mind the ugly seventies style plate)

Set up your double boiler for steaming and put a circle of wax or parchment paper on the bottom to help keep the buns from sticking to the pan. Place the buns in the pan close together, cover and steam.

Once they are done steaming take them out and they are ready to be served and devoured. They should have raised in size and become fluffy with a almost chewy like texture to them.

TASTY! Try your own and have fun with the filling. You could pretty much do this with any meat vegi filling you like. I've even done them with just chunks of cheese in the middle (my husband loved) and it tastes great with cheddar!

Sunshine Bentos!!!

Two beautiful sunshine Bento's.

So this winter has been one of the worst I've ever seen. There has been layers of snow week after week. It's enough to drive a native California girl crazy. This week the sunshine finally came out and melted some of the snow. I was so happy today I walked out to the mail box three times just to enjoy it. These bento's are to celebrate and hopefully welcome more sunshine here.
They also are an issue of pride since it is my very first time trying to make my own Tamagoyaki.

The pink one is my new afternoon tea bento set, and the green one is for David in a very masculine hello kitty bento.
Each bento is made up of a sun and a flower, or I guess it could be interpreted as two suns. Whichever makes you personally smile more.

There is a flower center made of sweet peaches, and the leaves are sliced buttered toast. (I like having toast with my eggs.) The sun is made from sliced Tamagoyaki roll that was seasoned with garlic, salt, onion powder, and parsley.
I actually used something between the cheater's method found from my idol Biggie on her Shortcut Tamagoyaki tutorial
and the traditional folding method.

I did try to do it the traditional way of making a folded omelet but as you can see it was a bit lopsided and not very pretty.
That is when I stepped in with biggie's method to make it more attractive and hold together well.

I put it on some saran wrap on my bamboo mat, and then used the bamboo mat to roll it into a nice long cylindar shape.

Behold the beauty of the omelet now!!

Then i sliced it into cute pieces. I like how mine looked since it still showed the folds, but i like the cheater method to help it along. Since I'm not good at making normal omelets much less making a rolled one look right.

Tada!! Two lovely breakfast sunshine bento's packed up and ready to go.
We had Peach Mango juice with each of ours.

Genesis

So this is the Genesis of my attempt at a cute bento blog.

I've recently become enamored of many great ladies and gentlemen on the internet who have awesome culinary talents and a love for Bento's and being inspired by them decided that I could no longer sit from the side lines but needed to buy a bento box and begin the steps of making Bento's myself. I will strap on my camera and try mostly from their great examples to create cute culinary cuisine (hehe cute yummy food) to share with anyone interested.
So here we have it; the genesis of my bento blog, and hopefully at some point I will look back at this and say "this was good". Wish me luck fokes I think I'm going to need it.

Also check out Little Foodies which is my favorite Bento blog. http://littlefoodie.blogspot.com/
This woman is what I hope to some day become. She is very involved with her children and teaching them about different cultures and cuisines, and keeps them involved. Where someday I hope to be able to home school my children when they are younger I hope I'm half as great as she is with her family.