Quick & Easy Bentou Box
To make a Japanese styled lunch box you can basically use any kinds of vegetables, fruits, left over food or whatever you desire. What I used to create 2 boxes:
* 2-3 dl of sushi rice
* sushi seasoning
* salt
* a slice of nori
* poppy seeds
* an apple
* few drops of lemon juice
* soy sausages
* a piece of cucumber
* 2 hard boiled eggs
In case you don´t own pretty lunch box you can use any other medium sized container/box (I used some old plastic ice cream boxes). Remember to include chopsticks/fork with the box! I had some wooden take away chopsticks, which I taped on top of the lunch box covers.
How to prepare the box:
1. The first thing to do is to prepare the rice. Remember to rinse the rice 3-4 times in fresh water before boiling it! To boil the rice you need exactly the same amount of water as rice (if you make 2 dl of rice, you need 2 dl of water). Put the rice into the water and put the kettle lid on. Use the middle setting of your stove to heat until the water starts to boil. Then drop the heat and cook for 15 minutes. After that take the kettle off, check out that the lid stays on top and turn the kettle upside down so the rice doesn´t stick on the bottom. The water should be evaporated by now! After five minutes turn it back and stir the rice. Let the rice cool down and add some sushi seasoning. To make onigiris you need a cup and plastic wrap. Cut a piece of wrap and cover the top of the cup. Sprinkle some salt and poppy seeds on to it. Take a small handful of rice and place it on top of the wrap piece. Lift the plastic wrap and twist the sides together to make a ball out of the rice. Now you can shape the rice ball; I made triangle ones! Cut a long slice out of a nori paper and cut some 2 cm x 5 cm slice out of it. Unwrap the rice balls and stick a nori slice with using a drop of water on the bottom of each ball: this way you don´t mess your fingers when eating the rice balls (you hold them from the nori spot).
2. Unless you have already boiled some eggs, do it now. Boil them hard and let them cool down. You can put them in the fridge if you like, this will make them a little bit easier to cut. You can basically cut or slice them in any shape. I made some simple slices and put them on the bottom right side of the boxes.
3. I wanted to add something salty with all the other fruit and vegetable parts, so I bought some soy sausages (since I don´t eat meat, these are good and easy to prepare!). I fried them on the pan and just simply cut them half.
4. If you are in no hurry you may try to cut the cucumber into very small sticks. I only made some rough cut sticks out of the cucumber piece I had left and placed them on top of the egg slices. The sausage halves came on top of them.
5. To make cute little pieces out of an apple, you need some sort of little mold or a shape cutter for that. Any sort of small and cute mold will do! I had a flower shaped mold which served me well. First I cut the whole apple into vertical thin slices. Don´t worry the seeds, they come easily off by pressing them out of the slices! In case they don´t bother you, you can leave them be. After the slicing I took little shapes off of the centre of the each slice. You can add a few drops of lemon juice on them to preserve them more fresh looking (especially if you eat the box the next day!).
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