LINE is not used in many English-speaking countries, but it is an extremely popular messaging program in many countries, including Japan.
One of the main characters in LINE is Brown the Bear. He is part of LINE’s celebrity couple of Cony and Brown.
Today we are making the bento above, a bento dedicated to Brown.
Ingredients:
- rice
- soy sauce
- katsuobushi (dried shaved bonito flakes, they should be at any Asian market)
- karaage (fried chicken, Japanese-style. Recipe here: http://norecipes.com/recipe/karaage-recipe/)
- lotus root salad (this was made with boiled and slice lotus root with salt and pepper tossed in a bit of mayonnaise. If lotus root is not available you can replace this with anything small)
- a Japanese omelette (http://www.japanesecooking101.com/tamagoyaki-recipe/ …Or just a bit of scrambled eggs will do. The important this is to have different elements to your bento)
- snap peas
- hot dog
- broccoli
- lettuce
- cherry tomato
- edamame
- sliced cheese
- seaweed
- mayonnaise
- raw spaghetti
Things you will need:
- A bento box - tupper ware also works
- A knife
- chopping board
- scissors (that you can use for food)
- tooth picks
- saran wrap
- decorative food picks
- small cupcake wrappers
Get out your ingredients. Don’t they look tasty?
put some soy sauce and katsubushi on your rice and mix it up. You want the rice to become brown. Put in the soy sauce a bit at a time, if you put too much on all at once you might just end up with really salty rice.
Take your special “brown rice” and make three balls of it using a bit of saran wrap. Make the ears as small as you can if you want it to look more like a bear.
Place the head and ears gently inside. You can put the head in a cupcake holder to make it look cuter. Take a piece of raw spaghetti and use it to affix the smaller rice balls to your head part.
take a toothpick and cut out a muzzle for your face. Take your seaweed and VERY CAREFULLY cut out parts.
Take your veggies and arrange them as you like. Hitomi often uses her small food pick to make an edamame skewer. Put your lotus root salad in a cupcake wrapper if you have one. You can use your lettuce to help “frame” your bento.
And there you are! If you have the LINE messaging app it might be the time to take a picture of your lovely bento and send it to all your friends.
