#51 - Cucumber salad cups bento

The cucumbers are on discount and I had some leftover salad. Sometimes good ideas just hit you on the spot. I thought of a way to present the salad in the bento and decided that I would make cups from cucumber. I have no clue if I have seen this somewhere before and that it popped back from the back of my head, but it works great!

I measured the cucumber next to the box to see how high the cups needed to be. Then I traced the shape of the cucumber with a small knife to make it easier to scoop the seeds out. Be careful though that you don't scoop too much. Dry them with some kitchen towel to drains some of the fluids. The cups then look like this:

Of course the pictures have been taken with my iPhone by night ;) But you get the idea. I filled them with pre bought chicken-pesto salad that I had left over from an evening with friends. But you can fill them with any kind of salad. I used the scooped out cucumber as a lid on top of the filling so the bento lid will stay much cleaner and you won't waste anything. Again use kitchen towel to drain them of moist. Like this:

Lastly I decorated them and filled the rest of the bento. I used 3 cups now because I have a lot of leftover salad, but I can see myself using this easy and fast method in the future to add one cup to a bento. And now on to the bento:

Rice with teriyaki sauce, peas, spring onion & mushrooms, the filled cucumber cups decorated with nori hearts and grapes on a skewer.

Tweet

#48 - Lazy bento with Ham Blossom

I am so tired today! Luckily there was plenty of yesterdays inarizushi left for another go and there was some leftover quiche. What's with the quiche lately, you ask? Well they were on sale, I have no excuse ;) I also saw this awesome ham blossom on Hapa Bento yesterday that is easy to make. I don't eat meat myself but my boyfriend does and we had some ham that needed to be used anyway. So it was the perfect timing to try this easy tutorial. Learn how to make your own ham blossom here!

Not the best picture around since iPhone and evening light don't go well together. This lazy bento contains: 3 inarizushi, 2 pieces of vegetarian Mediterranean quiche, ham blossom and grapes.

Tweet

Bento #10: Hearts for Valentine

Today I spend 1.5 hours in the kitchen making the bento that the boyfriend will take with him on valentines day. This is so not for me, really ;) I thought it took too long and I was happy when I was done. I do have to add that I am very slow at these things, so any other person might just spend an hour in the kitchen getting the same result. I am going to enter this bento in the BOMB challenge at Hapa Bento!


It contains pink heart shaped onigiri, apple slices, also cut in heart shapes using a cookie cutter and soy sauce in the bunny cup. The bottom tier has an egg, meatballs in tomato sauce, laughing red cow cheese and mixed Mexican veggies (corn, kidney beans, paprika and green beans) & edamame. Obviously making the onigiri took the longest.

If you would like to try to make heart shaped onigiri, I have a small tutorial posted below how you can do this using a heart shaped muffin tray. (you will have to excuse me for the blurry pictures since the focus was more on cooking and I took them really quick.)

First you need to have some pieces of plastic wrapper. I always cut these beforehand so I won't have to cut them during the progress. For this batch I cooked 2 cups of sushi rice in the rice cooker. (I really love my rice cooker!) I used some raspberry food coloring to get the pink color. Just add some drops in the bowl with the rice and stir really well until you got the color you want. I tasted the rice afterward but it didn't really leave an aftertaste so everything worked out fine :)


I placed some plastic wrapper over the tray and I filled it with a spoonful of rice. I pressed the rice in the hole so it would fill it nicely.


Then close it all up and pressing it down some more. I do this so it will stick after I remove the wrapping.


Turn the muffin tray around and gently (!!) squeeze in the tray until the rice comes lose. Carefully unwrap the onigiri and place them in the bento. You can use the same piece of wrap several times, but after 3 times it does get a bit too sticky, so it is better to have some more pieces ready.


When you want to freeze the onigiri for another time, keep the wrappers on and just put them in the freezer once the rice has cooled. I got 9 hearts out of my 2 cups of rice so I have frozen some for a next time.

I hope you all find this useful :) It is an easy technique and you can make some in advance like this :)

Tweet