Truth be told, I was thinking twice about posting this bento since I wasn’t really happy with how it came out. I hate it when it’s not well thought of, in this case, the fact that there’s not enough stuff in the bottom layer is obvious. But then, the inarizushi was yummy, and since I wanted to use the pic so I could post the recipe in my foodblog, I figured, what the hey?!

Top Tier:
3 Inarizushi! One of them has sushi rice mixed with shredded crabstick, but I can’t tell which.

Bottom Tier:
Octodogs, Hello Kitty container of mustard, and mushroom adobo.

Ingredient Spotlight
Abura-age is a thin sheet of deep fried tofu. In the recipe below, it’s used as a seasoned pocket for sushi rice. It can be found in the refrigerated section of your local Japanese grocery. The one I bought was sold in packets of three sheets, yielding 6 inarizushi pockets.

Inarizushi v. 1 August 2006
Bento sized / Makes 3 pieces.

Ingredients:
1 cup freshly cooked Japanese rice
tamanoi sushinoko

1 1/2 sheets abura-age
1/2 cup dashi
1 Tbsp sugar
2 Tbsp mirin
3 Tbsp soy sauce

Procedure:
1. Soak the abura-age for a few seconds in boiling water, then drain. Cut it in half, cross-wise, then gently pull it open to make a small pouch. (In my case, since I wanted to make 3 pieces, I cut before boiling.)

2. Mix together dashi, sugar, mirin, and soy sauce, then bring to boil. Lower the heat then drop in abura-age, making sure it’s covered in broth. Simmer for 15 minutes, then drain.

3. Sprinkle sushinoko on rice. Alternately, you can also make conventional sushisho from sushi vinegar, a little salt, and sugar. (I’ll post the exact proportions later, I need to refer to one of my Japanese cookbooks.)

4. Stuff rice into seasoned abura-age pockets then eat You can also mix other stuff in with the rice; for my first attempt, I added shredded kani surimi. It came out yummy. Other combinations I plan to try would be to add chopped mushrooms (will try sometime soon) and shredded sweet egg omelette.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, August 2nd, 2006 at 1:50 am and is filed under bento, food spotlight, recipes. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.