Bento no. 12: inari-zushi with thai fish cakes

I was very annoyed that it took me the best part of 1.5hrs to complete this bento. For starters, I was unable to find my prized find of stars and flowers cookie cutters! Then for some stupid reason I thought it was a great idea to start cooking rice…even though I had a large freezer stash! AAARGH! I didn’t even realize it until I had finished washing the rice – so as an afterthought added a piece of konbu.

Left with no stars or blossoms cookie cutters, my plan for a pretty inari-zushi garden bento were completely ruined. I tried salvaging it by using my also-brand-new teddy bear cookie cutter and ended up with something like a teddy bear’s picnic bento..

Top layer: Cutout from the thai fish cake (cooked from frozen) on top of some red sweet peppers, baby sweet corn and two clementines

Bottom layer: 4 inari-zushis with baby sweet corn flowers & red pepper teddy bear accent.

I loved the rice cooked with konbu! It gives it a very delicate umami flavour..mm mm good. Definately something that I will be doing again.  I mixed in some peas and surimi (crabsticks) to add flavour and texture to the otherwise plain rice dish – adding to the umami imparted by the konbu. I just mix the konbu in after cooking …it kinda resembles wakame after cooking anyway.

This is the box I made for the hubs:

As you can tell it is more of a teddy bear’s picnic on his than mine – he has his lunch in a meeting on Tuesdays, and it tickles me to think of all those people in their oh-so-serious three piece suits munching into sandwiches whilst he pulls out a pretty looking box of food that they’ve never seen before! So Tuesdays I put more kawaii effort on his whilst I get all his cut-outs…:(. Case in point – I got the leftover pepper cutouts from the teddy bears whilst he gets the cute bears!