Today’s bento is a Rilakkuma-themed spam musubi bento.
Spam musubi, is a rice ball with spam on top. There is usually a piece of seaweed wrapped around it to affix the spam to the rice.
Rilakkuma doesn’t look exactly happy about his spam-fate…But that shouldn’t stop you from trying your hand at this bento!
Ingredients:
- rice
- spam (put it in a fry pan and get the sides a little bit crispy)
- karaage (fried chicken, Japanese-style. Recipe here: http://norecipes.com/recipe/karaage-recipe/)
- quail egg (If you don’t have quail eggs, you can use a chicken one. The size will just be different)
- sliced ham
- snap peas
- hot dog- cut the tips off, put cuts in them and boil.
- sliced carrot- slice it about 1 cm thick and boil it to make it soft. (you can boil it when you boil the hot dog)
- cherry tomato
- edamame
- sliced daikon- (or slice cheese, if you don’t have daikon)
- 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
- a straw
- cookie cutter (star-burst shape or flower shape…if you have one!)
Get out your ingredients. First time ever buying Spam? Welcome to the island lifestyle. Use it for breakfast, lunch or dinner! It goes great in stir-fry.
Take your boiled slice of carrot and use your cookie cutter to take the edges into a pretty shape. Take a straw and stamp out holes around the sides. (SAVE SOME OF THE CIRCLES YOU CUT OUT FOR DECORATION)
Cut your slice of ham so that it becomes strips. Fold the strips in half and take a knife to make cuts down the folded side so that a fringe develops (see the picture below)
Take the ham and wrap it around your egg like in the picture below. You want the fringe edge to be facing up. Take a piece of raw pasta and use it to hold the ham in place.
Take your rice and separate it into lumps to go under your piece of spam. Take saran wrap and use it to form the rice into a shape that will fit nicely under the slices of spam that you have prepared.
Cut out daikon into muzzles for Rilakkuma and the seaweed to make eyes and the black part of the muzzle.
Take your rice and spam and join them together with a band of seaweed.
Take your bento ingredients and arrange them in your box. Cutting snap peas on a diagonal makes them look a bit more whimsical.
Take the seaweed, daikon and leftover carrot punch-outs and attach them to your bears. It the pieces are not staying on well by themselves, use a dab of mayonnaise as an edible adhesive.
There you go! You have a great East-meets-West bento of spam musubi.
But more important than that, you have a great kyara-ben! (character bento)
