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    Yum-Yum Bento All Year Round: Box Lunches for Every Season
    Yum-Yum Bento All Year Round: Box Lunches for Every Season
    Yum-Yum Bento All Year Round: Box Lunches for Every Season
    Ebook1,356 pages1 hour

    Yum-Yum Bento All Year Round: Box Lunches for Every Season

    By Crystal Watanabe and Maki Ogawa

    5/5

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    About this ebook

    Yum-Yum Bento is back with 52 more easy seasonal-themed bento lunches.

    From the depths of winter to the height of summer, a beautiful lunch can brighten any day. Japanese bento boxes are portable and pretty meals packed with healthy portions and plenty of cheer. And they’re outrageously cute! With Yum-Yum Bento All Year Round, you’ll fall in love with 52 tasty, in-season lunches. Spring into make-ahead action with packing tips, tutorials, side dish recipes, and more. From summer Sunshine Smiles to Christmas Gingerbread Friends, there’s a bento just perfect for your lunchbox today.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherQuirk Books
    Release dateDec 27, 2016
    ISBN9781594749391
    Yum-Yum Bento All Year Round: Box Lunches for Every Season

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    • 5/5
      My wife and I checked out and read Crystal Watanabe and Maki Ogawa's previous book, Yum-Yum Bento Box: Fresh Recipes for Adorable Lunches. We made a couple of the recipes and found it was easier than we thought. For the most part, we loved just browsing through the various recipes and imagining making them. I think people do that a lot with various cookbooks.

      In any case, this follow-up book of 52 recipes (one per week divided up by 13 for each of the four seasons) is just as clear and direct, with the same excellent quality of photographs.

      As a librarian, I'm partial to things like indexes, and this small book has a pretty good one. You can easily look up terms like "stir-fry" or "tempura" and be directed to the appropriate Bento meals. It also has a very nice Glossary section, additional recipes, and Resources section (Bento web sites, Etsy, eBay, etc.). The design and organization of this book is top notch.

      A final note (this from the authors). You don't have to just make Bento lunches - this is a neat resource for creating holiday themed dishes and hors d'oeuvres.

    Book preview

    Yum-Yum Bento All Year Round - Crystal Watanabe

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    Getting Started

    Before you dig in, here are some of the tools, skills, and ingredients you’ll want to pack into your bento toolbox. With practice and a little inspiration, you’ll be ready to start your adorable adventure!

    Tools for All Seasons

    Although special cutters and sandwich presses make bento easy, you may find your kitchen (and your home!) overrun with these items if you’re not careful. Here are some of the tools and accessories we use most often.

    An insulated bento box set has a container in which to keep food warm, along with two smaller side dish containers. Take it to school or work in a matching tote bag to express your individual style.

    Plastic bento boxes with domed lids are best for charaben because they cover the bento without smashing and ruining your hard work.

    Wooden bento boxes, or mage wappa, have a traditional, sleek style. Cedar boxes in particular have a wonderful aroma. To prevent staining, line your box with waxed or parchment paper before filling it.

    Metal bento boxes are great for overeager children who have a tendency to break plastic ones, and they come in a variety of ecofriendly and easy-to-maintain options.

    Mini ice packs are invaluable for keeping your bento cool until lunchtime.

    Silicone cups are great for holding small portions of wet salads, like those dressed with mayonnaise or containing fruit—plus they’re reusable. Paper cups are better for holding fried foods.

    Sauce bottles and cups are a great way to pack a small serving of sauce. Another option is to save packets of soy sauce, ketchup, and tonkatsu sauce from take-out restaurants.

    Food dividers, also known as baran or antibacterial sheets, are available in a wide variety of cute designs as well as the classic sushi grass style.

    Don’t quite have the hang of chopsticks yet? Using them to make bento is good practice. They’re particularly handy for scrambling eggs, stir-frying, and arranging noodles or bite-sized pieces of food in a bento.

    Kitchen shears serve many purposes in bento-making. For cutting tiny pieces of nori, a pair of micro-tip scissors is your best friend. Be sure to label your nori scissors to prevent crafty kiddos from borrowing them!

    Nori or craft punches make easy work of creating cute character faces. Look for punches that have metal dies; plastic ones don’t cut as well.

    Plastic food cutters are great for soft foods, but sets that cut out face shapes can be difficult to find a practical use for, and specially shaped cutters can fill up all the space in your drawers. Consider cutting your own specialty shapes with toothpicks.

    Hand-held hole punchers are great for making lots of tiny dots at once. The standard and ⅛-inch sizes are our favorites be-cause they’re just right for eyes and noses. If you can, find one with a rubber grip.

    Mini food cutters, usually made out of metal, are great for cutting slices of carrot and potato to be used as garnishes and accents. Wash and dry them soon after use to prevent rusting and food build-up.

    Drinking straws of various sizes are great for making small, round facial features. Cut them into 1-inch lengths so they last as long as possible.

    Tweezers help you position tiny details cut from sheets of nori. Look for sets that have a bent end for ease of use.

    Toothpicks are a wonderful multifunctional, disposable tool. Use them to trace shapes, paint cheese, or apply the tiniest pieces of nori. Just dab the tip on a moist paper towel to pick the pieces up.

    Food picks are handy for securing foods and accenting rice balls. A set of hat picks can make a rabbit rice ball into an instant Rabbit King (crown) or Gentleman Rabbit (top hat).

    Cute sandwich cutters are a quick way to make irresistibly adorable sandwiches. Just be sure to moisten the press with water to ensure the design imprints firmly into the bread slice.

    Bamboo sushi mats are useful when you want to form maki sushi (rolled sushi) or shape tamagoyaki (rolled omelet) into a round or rectangle shape. They can also be used to drain soba or somen noodles for salads.

    Rice paddles are used for mixing sushi rice, and miniature versions are great for flattening it. Paddles are made of bamboo or plastic; the plastic ones are specially coated so they don’t stick to rice.

    Tracing or parchment paper is an easy way to transfer designs from paper to food, such as cheese. Sometimes having a guide can make all the difference in creating just the right shape for your charaben.

    Got lots of leftover notebooks, pencils, crayons, and colored pencils from your child’s school supplies at the end of the year? Use them to sketch bento ideas and cute characters.

    Bento Packing Basics

    All of the lunches in this book can be adjusted to make larger portions or omit the cute characters. Beneath all the fun and smiles are delicious recipes for people of all ages. Don’t want cute cats smiling at you? Simply add plain boiled eggs sliced in half to a lunch.

    The vast majority of these meals contain rice, which is the primary starch in Japan and Hawaii, where we live. That said, except for the rice ball recipes, you can always substitute other starches, such as mashed potatoes or cauliflower, quinoa, or pasta. Simply adapt our designs for your personal preferences. Get creative!

    The basis for all of our bento designs is not the cute character, but the lunch it accompanies. Feel free to mix and match side dishes and characters, achieving almost the same effect. Here are some basic bento-packing tips to make lunch prep quick and easy.

    Make characters in advance.

    Nothing is more hectic than mornings in a house full of kids. Because you’ll be chasing around for clothes to be put on, teeth to get brushed, and homework to be packed up (after they unpack it from the night before, of course), having your little quail-egg chunks or cute kamaboko doggies all ready to go in your fridge can be a lifesaver.

    Store characters made with cheese on wax paper to prevent sticking and cover with plastic wrap. In the morning, discard the plastic and pack the characters into your bento.

    Prep veggies the night before.

    Packing a lunch with rice the night before and refrigerating it is not recommended, because the rice will dry out, but boiling and cutting your vegetables the night before is a useful and recommended time-saver. Wash and dry lettuce leaves and boil broccoli, carrot, and potato slices. Cut them into shapes, cover, and store.

    Use up leftovers.

    Don’t have time to play short-order cook in the morning? Utilize leftovers by setting aside a small bento-sized portion from dinner in the evening. Mince leftover meats to stuff into rice balls or chop up for fried rice. Always try to pack lunches with fresh or reheated rice. To make refrigerated rice fluffy again, cover the rice with a moistened paper towel and microwave for a minute or so.

    Make a bento palette.

    The starch is usually the background for our bentos. We start most of our lunches by packing in a portion of rice, often enough to fill half the bento box, then flattening the top with a fork or mini rice paddle. Use the same utensil to straighten the edge of the rice to make space in the box for side dishes. If you’re using a starch or protein that is a little too loose and may shift around, consider making a smooth egg omelet to contain it and create a palette for your cute character.

    To create a smooth omelet, strain a beaten egg into a bowl to remove the lumps. In another bowl mix together a small amount of water and cornstarch, and then mix this slurry into the egg. Cook in a small pan over low heat until firm, adding food coloring or natural coloring ingredients if desired.

    Line with lettuce leaves.

    You’ll notice that nearly all of our bentos contain lettuce leaves. The leaves serve multiple purposes. They help to keep foods separate, which is great when you don’t want saucy foods to mix with rice or side dishes. Lettuce also provides a splash of color, which can instantly transform a dull yellow or brown bento into something dynamic and bright. Other wonderful leafy green options include mizuna, kale, purple kale, red leaf lettuce, and shingiku.

    Include bento fillers.

    An essential part of making your bento lunch look complete is filling in the open areas between your main dish and starch. Look at what’s available in your market and pack what’s in abundance. Are the Honeycrisps particularly good in a certain month? Cut some up for your bento! Are the strawberries sweeter from a certain roadside stand only during one particular time of the year? Use them instead of tomatoes! This will give your seasonal lunch an even fresher taste.

    If you pack lunches for work, store a bottle of your favorite salad dressing in the office fridge and finish your lunch with a mini salad of leftover lettuce.

    Natural Ways to Dye Rice

    Colorful rice is an easy way to add a burst of personality to your bento. Cook the rice as usual, but add food coloring to the water. Or stir in food coloring to cooked rice while it’s still hot. Start with a little of the coloring ingredient and add more as you stir until the rice becomes the color you want. The rice will be difficult to dye once it has cooled.

    Although store-bought food coloring is a convenient way to achieve almost any color of rice, you don’t have to dye rice artificially. Here are some of the colors you can create with natural ingredients.

    Orange

    finely grated carrot

    ketchup (pictured)

    Green

    dried parsley

    edamame, minced (pictured)

    spinach powder

    Red

    pickled ginger, minced (pictured)

    red pepper, minced

    Yellow

    boiled egg yolk (pictured)

    curry powder

    mashed squash

    Blue

    purple potato powder

    decofuri (pictured)

    Purple

    mashed purple sweet potato

    yukari or shiso fumi furikake (pictured)

    Gray

    black sesame seed powder (pictured)

    Pink

    cod roe (pictured)

    Brown

    soy sauce (pictured)

    bonito flakes

    Black

    nori (pictured)

    Spot something unfamiliar? Check out the glossary!

    Ingredients for Happy Faces

    This colorful guide includes our most commonly used techniques for creating the basic elements of cute bento faces. Mix and match to make your own characters!

    Heads

    Noses

    Hats

    Hair

    Eyes

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