Book review: Hawaii's Bento Box Cookbook by Susan Yuen

Title: Hawaii's Bento Box Cookbook
Author: Susan Yuen
Publisher: Mutual Publishing
Release date: July 2008
Length: 144 pages

I have been planning to write this review for weeks now but somehow never got to it because I wanted to try some recipes from the book first before I would review it. In total I tried three things from the cookbook, two recipes and one bento idea. I loved cooking from this book because it gave me so much inspiration! There are a lot of cute things that seem to be fairly easy to make, like this Penguin bento. The book is very handy to use in the kitchen because it has rings, you can easily bend the book to the page you need without the pages flipping back. The paper is of high quality and you can even clean it if you splatter a bit on the pages, which happens to me a lot when I am cooking.

On the other hand I had to adapt almost every recipe I wanted to try. This is partly because I have to substitute ingredients that are hard to get here and partly because I don't eat meat and lot of recipes in this book did focus on meat. The author works with a lot of cutters and animal shaped bowls, so I do have to make a note that together with this book, you might need to buy various other tools for the book to be useful.

I am glad that I tested some things from this book and I will surely continue to use this book as an inspiration in the future. I would recommend this book to people who already have some bento supplies and want some ideas for making cute bento. However be prepared that you might need to use your own creativity to substitute some of the ingredients. I liked this book enough that I placed the 2nd volume on my wishlist to gain more inspiration!

Recipes I tried from this book:
Teriyaki Hamburgers (Vegetarian version)
Potato-Macaroni Salad

Purchase links: Amazon
Other reviews: Lunch in a box
If you have reviewed this book and want your link here, please leave a comment with the link, and I will add it :)

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