Another picnic bento...:)! I don't know why, but I just love making picnic-style bento. I suppose it's because I can very easily fill in the basket / picnic bento box with many types of food. I have actually received the 3 bento boxes which I ordered online some time ago, two Kokeshi bento boxes and one Meiji bento box. To be honest, I didn't expect the bento boxes to be that small ;). I mean each of the Kokeshi bento boxes contain three small food containers, which all in all would provide you with more than enough food, the problem is each of the containers is so small, it's so hard to fill it in nicely. This is one reason why I have not used any of the bento boxes yet. Next time I would buy square or rectangular-shapes bento boxes. These two shapes would be easier to work with, I suppose...!

The bento boxes look very cute though... - The main reason why I bought them...;).

The picnic bento today is filled with two different types of sandwich: Serrano smoked ham, cheese, spicy mayonnaise and lettuce sandwich and Paprika chicken breast, cheese, mayonnaise and blanched green beans sandwich. The sandwich looks rather messy, because I tried to use the Panda sandwich cutter (see my bento boxes/bento accessories picture above), but the bread always split apart in the middle, even though I didn't put much filling inside - maybe because my bread is too old?? It's one week old and probably not as soft as it should be and thus tears easily...?

Besides sandwich, we also had baked Chicken Cordon Bleu, Cordon Bleu Kimbap, tamagoyaki, penguin-shaped onigiri, green beans/carrots/ham rolls, salami rose, mini ice-cream cone cake pop, broccoli, flower carrots, strawberries, grapes, red currant and flower sausages.

That's it for today...! Have a lovely evening, everyone - at least, in Europe :). Not happy that tomorrow is Monday again... :(

Mini ice-cream cone cake pops, how cute is that...?? I knew I had to make these beautiful little morsels after I saw the picture in Bakerella's Cake Pops book. I am still very clumsy at working with melted chocolate, dear me, the mess...! But I guess it's worth it as I love the results, even though Bakerella's are way much prettier...! I guess I simply need to practise more :-).

Bakerella's cake pop recipe always involves a type of cake (she likes using cake mix) and frosting: vanilla, cream cheese, chocolate, well, you name it yourself. But because I am normally quite lazy to bake cakes myself at home, since my husband and I are not much of a cake eater, I like using Oreo cookies to make cake pops. You only need to grind the cookies in a food processor then add cream cheese, form it into little balls and then dip them into melted chocolate. And ta-dah...cake pops are ready :). This time, because I forgot to buy cream cheese, I used milk to make the cake pop dough and it worked very well...!

Ingredients - makes 12

• 352 grams OREO cookies
  
• Milk
  
• White chocolate, melted (add red food colouring to make pretty pink colour)
• Dark chocolate, melted
  
• Ice cream cone
• Coloured sprinkles
• Red smarties
  

Instructions

• Place Oreo cookies in a food processor and grind to fine crumbs.
• Add milk a little at a time to the Oreo cookie crumbs. The consistency is right when the dough is pliable and not too dry nor too sticky. When it's too dry, add more milk, when it's too sticky, you have to add more Oreo cookie crumbs.
• Shape the dough into little balls.
• One at a time, cover an Oreo ball with pink melted chocolate.
• Insert a toothpick into the ball to lift it out.
• Transfer the coated Oreo ball to the prepared ice cream cone.
• Decorate with coloured sprinkles, melted dark chocolate and red smarties.
  

Oreo balls before being coated with melted chocolate.

These mini ice-cream cone cake pops are great for tea time too :D)!!

I made Empress Rice or Com Hoang Hau in Vietnamese (please excuse the missing accents!) today. I had always wanted to make it ever since I saw it in my Vietnamese cookbook Quick and Easy Vietnamese Home Cooking for Everyone by Andre Nguyen and Yukiko Moriyama. It looks gorgeous, festive and delicious too! Unfortunately the bento pictures here don't really show how pretty the rice actually looks, because it's covered by fruit, vegetables and so on...! My husband especially found the rice really yummy and aromatic, I guess a real change from the usual fried rice. It's not very complicated to make either.

The rice uses coconut juice and vanilla leaves, which I think really accentuate the beautiful aroma of the rice.

Ingredients - serves 2
Adapted from Quick and Easy Vietnamese Home Cooking for Everyone

• 1 cup jasmine rice, rinsed and drained
• 10 cm Asian vanilla leaves
• 2 cups coconut juice (not coconut milk...!)
• 1/2 cup Chinese sausage, diced
• 1/2 cup Vietnamese ham, diced
• 1/2 cup chicken fillet, diced
• 60 g long beans, sliced
• 1/2 cup chopped green onions
• 2 salted eggs (use only chopped yolks)
• 2 thin omelets
• 1 teaspoon chopped garlic
• 1 teaspoon sliced chili, seeded
• 5 - 6 quail eggs, hard boiled
• 1/2 teaspoon each, sugar, salt, pepper, soy sauce
• 2 tablespoon oil for stir-frying

Instructions

• Cook rice with vanilla leaves and coconut juice in a rice cooker.
• In a non-stick skillet, make 2 thin omelets and shred finely. Cut up all the remaining ingredients, except for quail eggs.
• Heat oil in a wok and stir fry all ingredients except quail eggs. Season with sugar, salt, pepper and soy sauce.
• Place hard boiled quail eggs in a rice bowl.
• Press down the meat mixture to line the bowl. Add cooked rice and press hard. Turn over to unmold.

Note: I didn't add the quail eggs to the rice, as it's actually meant to be, because I wanted to make some cute characters with them.

Filling: Vietnamese Empress Rice, slices of mango, grapes, blueberries, red currant, strawberries, tamagoyaki (Japanese rolled omelet), flower sausages, cherry tomato, broccoli, hard-boiled bear, chick and piggy quail eggs.

I was in the mood of making something very festive today and hence the various colourful characters: a yellow chick, an orange bear, a green frog, a pink piggy, a brown seal and a mutated (^-^) cow-piggy. I tried to colour the rice with natural food colourings: turmeric for the yellow chick, chili sauce for the orange bear (you can substitute this with tomato sauce too), soy sauce for the brown seal and spinach for the green frog (or you can use mashed edamame too). Unfortunately I had to use pink food colouring to colour the piggy because I simply had no idea how to get a pink hue with natural ingredients. I know a lot of bento makers use sakura denbu to colour the rice pink, but if you do a further research, you will find out that commercial sakura denbu has got added red food colouring as well. To be very honest, I am not fanatic about not consuming food colourings, it's quite hard to avoid anyway since food colourings are regrettably added in almost all commercial food products, especially in sweets and instant sauces or mixes. Think of smarties, coloured marshmallows, those instant soups from Maggi (and other brands) etc. I think it's okay to consume it as long as we do not exaggerate. I know there are people who are absolutely against adding food colouring to the food or dessert they cook or bake, and bash people who do, but they comfortably eat commercial food products which contain food colouring (and often in large quantity too). Hmmm, how pointless...! Don't you think that sometimes people who try to be politically correct (even in the kitchen) most of the time are often quite foolish?

Oh well, let's move on to a more exciting topic: dumplings :)!! Most of my faithful blog readers should know that I adore dumplings and before my blog recently evolves into a bento blog ;), I mostly posted about dim sum, rice and noodles recipes. So, my bento creations could actually never be complete without adding some of my homemade dumplings in them...! I should probably one day also make a dim sum bento: a bento box simply filled with different types of dumplings, yum...:)!

I made those dumplings above this morning. This time I didn't make the wrappers myself to save time. If you want to make the wrappers yourself, please check my previous dim sum recipes, such as the Kuotie recipe or the Boiled Jiao Zi recipe. The dumplings I made this morning are extremely easy to make with very simple ingredients - totally yummy too...!!

Pork and Green Onions Dumplings

• 25 - 30 dumpling wrappers
• 250 gram ground pork
• 1 cup chopped green onions
• 3 tablespoons oyster sauce
• 1 tablespoon fish sauce
• 1/2 teaspoon garlic powder (optional)
• White pepper and sugar to taste

Mix all ingredients (except the dumpling wrappers) and then fill around 1 teaspoon of the meat mixture into a dumpling wrapper. Close and pleat the wrapper. Repeat this process to the other wrappers.

I steamed my dumplings but you can also pan fry, deep fry or boil the dumplings. It's entirely your choice!

Bento Box 1: Cute animals onigiri filled with prawn tempura, Japanese rolled omelette/tamagoyaki, 2 slices of kiwi, grapes, strawberries, blueberries and red currant.

Bento Box 2: baked chicken wings, cucumber slices, Parmesan crispy chicken, steamed pork and green onions dumplings, blanched broccoli and carrots, tamagoyaki, cherry tomato, piggy quail egg and red currant.

These two bento boxes are not only good for a picnic, but also for a movie night. A good alternative for the usual crisps or popcorns :)!

I didn't actually intend to make a fat Chococat. Unfortunately my silly hands made him disproportionately fat. I think next time I should make sure that his body is much smaller than his head and of course I should let him have his slim legs back. This fat Chococat has got gigantic legs, I know...;)!

I made this bento for my (and my husband's) lunch/dinner. We didn't manage to eat everything and the Chococat is still 'alive' and currently he is sleeping in the fridge...;).

Filling: Chococat Onigiri filled with Indonesian fried rice, broccoli, strawberries, grapes, Schwarzwälder (Black Forest) ham wrapped green beans, meat patties, sausage tulips, fish balls, sugar snap peas and mandarin.

Today just a simple and quick bento.... I didn't really know what to make, but then I remembered the ham piggies from Kaerenmama - cute and very easy to make.

As you can see, I almost didn't do any cooking, as I used mostly pre-made foods, such as chicken nuggets, piccolini, sausages and cheese hashbrown. The only thing I had to do was blanching the vegetables and washing the fruit.

Until next time...!

Does it look like a monkey? My husband couldn't guess that it's a monkey :(.

This bento was rather quick to make, I suppose it's because I didn't try to make too much food like previously. I know I somehow always made 'picnic bento' in the past ;). I took some pictures of the monkey before it was formed, and I hope this would help people who want to recreate this character at home. You don't need fancy bento accessories at all, here are what I used:

• Brown rice (or white rice browned with soy sauce)
• Cheese, I used Gouda
• Roasted seaweed (nori)
• Ham
• Toothpick
• Decorating tip
• Drinking straw
• Plastic wrap
• Kitchen knife
• Kitchen scissors
• Your hands :)

I used a toothpick to outline the face of the monkey, before cutting it out with a kitchen knife. Use the bottom part of the decorating tip to make two small circles from the cheese and nori. These would later be used for the eyes (You don't actually need to make two cheese circles, the nori circles are enough for the eyes, I just wanted the eyes to pop out more). The nose holes are made out of nori. I cut these out manually, the same with the mouth. I used the drinking straw to cut out the mini pink cheeks.

Then I formed the rice using plastic wrap, before topping it up with the 'face accessories'. Don't forget to make two smaller rice balls for the ears - not pictured here, unfortunately... I was in a hurry!

I you look at the finished monkey rice balls one more time, you'll notice that in the end I decided to add more 'face accessories'. I added mini cheese circles to the eyes to brighten them up (I used my drinking straw to cut them out) and two bigger pink cheeks which I cut out using my decorating tip. The inner pink parts of the ears are cut out using the bottom part of the decorating tip again.

Filling: slices of mandarin, hard-boiled egg, cherry tomatoes, blackberries, broccoli, grapes, edamame (boiled soy beans), green beans/ham rolls, German 'Frikadelle'/meat patties, monkey rice balls, potato salad, green tea mochi and two chocolate truffles.

I used to love Tare Panda a lot. It's a character from San-X, a stationary/gift manufacturing company from Japan. Tare Panda is very lazy and loves to eat mochi, just like me ;)!

Left Bento: Tare panda made out of rice, nori and goat cheese. The mini panda is made out of hard-boiled egg, broccoli, strawberries, grapes, raspberries, kiwi, mandarin, lettuce and blanched bok choy.

Right Bento: Fried panko-coated shrimps (Ebi Furai), cherry tomatoes, blueberries, mini bear sausage, green tea mochi, potato salad, Bourbon vanilla truffle, broccoli, a slice of mandarin and strawberry.

Happy Weekend, everyone!

Howdy everyone...! Some people think that my Kuririn Hamster Bento looks like Hamtaro. This made me thinking, that I should make a character from the Ham-Hams society ;). I chose to make Howdy, because I think he looks adorable. The brown rice is made out of rice and soy sauce. Eyes, nose and lips from nori. His sumo shop apron is made out of surimi and his paws of a sausage. I wanted to use cheese for his tooth, but was afraid that it would look too light in pictures, that's why I used a corn kernel instead (not a very good idea, I think...! Yellow tooth??).

I spent probably three hours preparing this bento. I never plan what to use or what to make in advance, that's why I always waste my time in the kitchen, thinking what I should do. Anyway, I made Vietnamese summer rolls and Vietnamese Lemon grass Chicken. I bought the chicken nuggets, crab claws, har gow and mochi from an Asian market.

We didn't manage to eat Howdy and the Vietnamese Lemon grass Chicken (in the claypot). It's good because this means I can bring Howdy to work tomorrow (my first bento to be brought to work ;)!) and my husband can have the Lemongrass chicken for tomorrow's lunch.

I don't know what to name my bento... I call it 'Onigiri Bento' simply because there are 5 onigiris in the bento boxes. Two at the back are filled with prawn tempura and three at the front are normal onigiri without any filling.

Besides the onigiris, I filled in the bento boxes with Japanese rolled omellete or 'Tamagoyaki', Beef Yakiniku, chicken nuggets, Hawaiian piccolini, green beans/ham rolls, two quail eggs, broccoli, strawberries, blueberries, green grapes, cherry tomatoes and oranges.

Beef Yakiniku

• 500 g beef steak, thinly sliced
• Flour to coat the beef slices
• 2 tablespoons cooking oil
• 1 medium sized onion, thinly sliced
• 1 clove garlic, minced
• 1 sweet bell pepper, sliced
• 3 stalks green onions, sliced
• 3 tablespoons sake
• 3 tablespoons mirin
• 5 tablespoons soy sauce
• Sugar and white pepper to taste
• Toasted sesame seeds for garnish

Instructions

• Heat 2 tbs oil in a wok.
• Add miced garlic and onion. Stir fry until fragrant and slightly brown.
• Toss in the flour coated beef slices and fry for about 1 minute.
• Add sake, mirin , soy sauce, pepper and sugar. Mix well.
• Now, add the bellpeppers and green onions. Stir fry for another 2 minutes or until everything is cooked through.
• Garnish with toasted sesame seeds.

By the way, I would also use the chance today to say thank you to Stephanie Gang, the writer of Edible Art, for bestowing me with the wonderful award below :). It's highly appreciated...! Now I need to pass on this award to 15 lovely bloggers. I always find tasks like this very difficult, because there are actually so many wonderful bloggers out there but I am only allowed to choose 15. But well, since it is the award's rule, so here goes the list...

1. Alison from Alison's Trials
2. Belzy from Belzy's Kitchen
3. Deepa from Hamaree Rasoi
4. Honest Vanilla
5. Jose Manuel from Asopaipas
6. Kristy from My Little Space
7. Lena from Frozen Wings
8. Lia from Bentolicious
9. Little Corner of Mine
10. Manja from Jakubick
11. Marie from ParikkObento
12. Shierly from Kokken 69
13. Swathi from Zesty South Indian Kitchen
14. Tou Tou from Light Delight with Tou Tou
15. Vivienne from Green Cilantro

I have also received another award a few days ago from Veny, a very nice and lovely woman in Indonesia who loves to eat everything 'enak-enak' (which means delicious) :D). To receive this award I need to tell you 7 things you might not know about me. I want to pass on this award to all my blog readers...:)!

1. I am in my 20s. I have the impression some people think I am much older ...;)!
2. I currently live in Germany, but I used to live in Sydney and Jakarta as well
3. I love reading books, especially something related to history : The Renaissance, The Tudors, The French Revolution, etc.
4. I love Barock and Rococo style, this might have been influenced by the manga I read when I was a little girl - The Rose of Versailles by Riyoko Ikeda.
5. I hated shopping and fashion when I was younger, but now I do enjoy shopping very much and I love wearing pretty clothes and accessories (even though I cannot always do this every day unfortunately...!)
6. I am a quite shy person and I am very bad at small talks. But once I have got to know you better, I could be crazy too at times and would show the sides you would never imagine I possess ;).
7. I am rather paranoid - one reason why my profile picture is a bunny. But believe me, I am as cute as that bunny, hahaha...;)!!

Alright folks, that's it for today....!

I didn't really have any idea what to make for my bento today, that's why I decided to make something simpler than my normal 'kyaraben' bento. I made prawn tempura sushi and smoked salmon/omelette sushi. I know my prawn tempura don't look very pretty this time, my previous attempt looked better. I used instant tempura flour to save time, but I didn't use cold water. Maybe it's one reason why the tempura don't look so 'spiky'.

The smoked salmon/omelette sushi were meant to look like flower sushi, but I don't think it looks so obvious in picture ;). I got the idea from a Japanese cookbook about decorative sushi that I got from my sister some time ago. Anyhow, it was a delicious lunch. We ate it while watching 'Resident Evil: Afterlife' :). I think the first and second films are better. It was nevertheless quite entertaining to watch.

By the way, I think most of you are aware of the Tsunami in Japan. It's indeed a very sad tragedy :(. My thoughts are with you, people of Japan...

I made this a few months ago, but didn't really have the motivation to post it until today, at least it's a change from my bento posts...:).

I prefer making sushi rolls (maki) because I find it easier to make and less time-consuming, but I like having nigiri sushi too from time to time. My favourite topping for nigiri sushi is boiled shrimps.

Ingredients

• 2 cups sushi rice (short grain)
• 2 1/2 cups water
• 1/4 cup rice vinegar
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 2 teaspoons sugar
• Boiled shrimps
  
• Wasabi

Directions

• Wash the rice well and drain the water.
• Cook sushi rice with 2 1/2 cups of water in a rice cooker.
• After the rice is cooked, add rice vinegar, salt and sugar. Mix well with a rice paddle.
• Form the rice into ovals (use saran wrap to prevent sticking) after the rice has cooled down.
• Add a dab of wasabi to each rice ball and top it off with boiled shrimp.