How To Maximise the Heat in a Food Jar

A few mummies have asked me what they should do if they want to pack hot soup and stews for their children. The solution is simple - use a food jar. They come in different sizes, so get one that you are sure your child can handle the weight and operation of.

This is a Thermos Foogo, one of two I have (the other is out with Takoyaki, haha!). I bought them fairly cheaply at Jusco in Malaysia when they were having a super sale, so the price, converted from Malaysian Ringgit, was about half that of what the major department stores in Singapore were charging. Great deal!

There are many brands of thermal food jars out there, among which the most popular and recognised-as-effective brands are Tiger, Zojirushi and Thermos. You gotta admit it, the Japanese know how to make it right since they use this so much!

Whether you purchase a "good" (read "expensive") brand or a cheaper brand that may lose heat faster, there's one important thing you MUST do to maximise the heat retention of your jar. 

Before you put your soup or stew into the jar, ALWAYS pour boiling water into the jar, cover it up and let it sit for about 5 minutes.

This allows the inner walls of the jar to heat up so they don't start cooling your hot stew or soup down as soon as it is poured in. After about 5 minutes (or as long as it takes to heat up the stew/soup itself), pour the hot water away into a mug and use it for washing stuff. Mine usually has a metallic taste after that so I don't use it for cooking or drinking.

I have tested this with Takoyaki and she said the food was still rather hot by lunchtime. 

Wednesday - Ham and Cheese rollups

Roast Meat requested for Oreos so I rolled a slice of shaved ham and a slice of cheese around a cucumber stick, then secured it with a long piece of cucumber skin for the protein factor.

I will not be packing a bento for RM or Takoyaki tomorrow because they will be having Children's Day celebrations and from experience, the teachers will be giving out a lot of goodies.

Pseudo Temaki (Japanese Handroll) Bento

This is a twist on the traditional temaki or Japanese handroll. On the side are apple chunks, cherry tomatoes and M&Ms in the sauce cup. I hope the kids like it d:)

How To Make a Bread Temaki

Cut a big square of nori (toasted Japanese seaweed) in two to form two rectangles. 

Lay one nori rectangle on the board or work surface. (Keep the other rectangle for something else).

Flatten a slice of bread with a rolling pin or a tall glass and place it on the nori.

Top with a slice of ham and blanched french beans (you can use other fillings).

Starting from the horizontal edge nearest to you, roll the whole thing up across the diagonal of the bread to form a temaki shape. Let rest for a few seconds on the board so the nori can soften, stick together and hold the shape.

How To Make Kawaii Mini Buns Using Egg Moulds

Some of my earlier posts featured some moulded little buns in the shape of animals or vehicles. These are an easy way to provide cute, kid-sized portions of mini buns for bentos, especially if Mum is not in the mood nor skillful enough to bake her own little buns, which is me pretty much 100% of the time d:P I learnt this from a Bento Daddy on a bento Facebook group. Thank you Jedi Master Peter!

You will need:

One slice of sandwich bread, as fresh as possible for the best results.

Egg mould (any shape, but not for quail eggs).

Some pasty filling for the bread eg. Nutella, peanut butter, cream cheese spread, jam, or just butter.

Start by slicing the crust off the bread slice, taking away as little of the white part as you can. Spread some filling on one side, leaving at least a 1.5cm border all around. Resist the urge to pile on the filling, or it will leak out of your final product and look yucky. I also prefer not to use dry fillings such as pork floss, because the whole thing is just... dry.

Bread with Nutella spread in the middle

Next, gather up all four corners of the bread, overlapping slightly.

With the flat side facing down, press the bread into one side of the egg mould. 

Use clean dry fingers to squeeze all the bread in. Leave nothing sticking out around the edges. If you don't press it all in, the features will not be clear.

With the tip of a thin knife or with your fingers, gently and carefully ease the bread out.

Ta-da! You can use many ingredients to mark out the features and make them more prominent. I don't do that because... I am just plain lazy d:P

Experiment! Try different fillings and moulds. I've also been successful with a certain set of vehicle sandwich cutters, which I will post another time.

I've put these in Takoyaki and Roast Meat's bentos today, together with some ham/cheese/veg rolls, and assorted fruits.

RM's bento

Takoyaki's bento

We are all very happy today because it's the last day of Term 1 and we will have a short one week break. See you the week after!

How To Make a Tomato Bunny

So folks, here's the tutorial for the tomato bunnies featured in Takoyaki's bento yesterday.  

WARNING: some gory and bloodshed ahead. Do not proceed if you cannot bear to see a tomato get dissected.

Here are the stuff that you will need.  The paring knife is actually good enough for all steps, but I took the Hapimogu carving knife out since I have it.

Cherry tomato, black sesame seeds, a small sharp knife, tweezers.

First, slice off lengthwise, a side of the cherry tomato. Make sure the piece you cut off is less than half the tomato.

Slice off less than half the tomato

Next, cut out a triangular wedge from the cut off piece. Discard the wedge (or eat it). What's left will form the ears.

Ear piece is done

On the main tomato, with the cut side down on the board, carefully slice at a 45 degree angle halfway into the tomato, towards the stem end. Do not cut all the way through.

Just in front of the cut, right above the stem end, gently poke two slits with the tip of a small sharp knife to form the eye slits.

Ouch! I'm blind

With the tweezers, poke a black sesame seed into each slit.

I was blind but now I see

All that's left to do is to insert the ear piece into the flap and the tomato bunny is done!

 

Tomato bunny complete! (in lots of gore)

You can also try this technique on other fruits. Here's a grape bunny.

Frankenstein

My heart was itching to make a Frankie, so despite earlier protests, Frankie it is. Mr Roast Meat was actually ok with it, after he saw the finished product.

Frankie is slightly abstract on a cheese spread sandwich, the top slice of which is spread with kaya (coconut jam) to achieve the slightly green effect. The bat's on cheese with sesame seed eyes, and in the top tier is a very failed scallion and leek tamagoyaki (the pan is starting to stick very badly!) which I just chopped up and dumped in the silicone cup.

The hair, nose, mouth and scar of Frankenstein are all cut by hand, while the eyes are just little round pieces of cheese with a black sesame seed each. The nori bat is also cut freehand based on my memory of some of my friends' bats, placed on a sliced of cheese, left to soften a little, then I carved around the seaweed with my knife. The eyes are white sesame seeds, and I also gave Frankie a drop of sweat by sticking on one white sesame seed in his hair.

Bento staple - Tamagoyaki

I finally caved in and bought a tamagoyaki pan to make my life easier. The great thing about this silicone-coated pan from Daiso is that it's really tiny, so I won't have to use so many eggs to achieve the many many layers.

Here's the result of my first try:

A little too dark, I'm afraid. I love the practically white tamagoyaki I've seen in professional bento pics and I've always wondered HOW they get them that way without undercooking? My friend Emmem recently posted her beautiful, UNburnt tamagoyaki and gave us a tip - low heat. However, all the videos I've seen say the pan must be hot (at least medium heat) so that the egg mixture will not stick to the pan. Argh... I can't get my head round this.

But I will try again!

Here's a great English vid by two Japanese ladies on how to use a tamagoyaki pan.

How To Make Striped Cheese

Quite some time back expert bento'er Amy from Mothering Corner showed our bento group her striped cheese bears (oh so cute!) and also taught us how to make it for ourselves. I finally got down to making it today. Here's my block of striped cheese which I've double wrapped and put in an airtight box in the fridge.

I won't try to reinvent the wheel here, so for the photo tutorial, please hop on over to Amy's blog. I didn't cut my cheese in half though, just used up two whole packs of regular cheese and smoked cheese (SCS, because it was on offer). Figure the extra can just be used in sandwiches anyway. The kids will love it. And because I like to procrastinate, the slicing of the striped cheese will be done when I want to bento with it.

More of the Savannah

We went out for brunch at the heartland mall again. Mr Roast Meat told me LAST NIGHT that he has to bring a photo of himself to school on Thursday for Art lesson, so we had to make a dash to the photo store to get some pics developed. What's with children and last minute must-dos?

On our walk back, I thought this bento out in my head, so the minute we got home I timed myself and started cutting, etc. Took me exactly twenty minutes! Much less time than I expected, although I guess with a little better planning, it could have been even shorter.

It's a simple cheese sandwich, cut to fit the box WITH the box itself, so only the bottom crust is "leftover" (which will go into my bread crusts box to be ground into breadcrumbs for meatballs/patties at the end of the week). The cheese elephant and hippo are cut out with some cookie cutters, and features were pre-punched with my $2 Daiso nori punchers and kept in a pill box in the freezer (to keep them crisp).

On the spur of the moment, I decided to cut some of my leftover nori (from the feature punching) into simple shapes and add them to the picture. They are "glued" to the bread with a dab of kaya each (or you can use jam, butter, even water). Don't ask me what a fruit tree is doing on the savannah though. At the back are some seedless grapes and some peanut butter filled M&Ms. Oooh! said Mr Roast Meat.

I used some clingwrap to wrap up the Rilakuma silicone cup holding the M&Ms (to prevent them from rolling all over), and another sheet of clingwrap to cover the entire box before putting the lid on (to prevent the cheese from sticking to the box during "transportation"). That's it! Twenty minutes. If you can read Chinese - 绰绰有余.

How To - Sausage Octopuses With Eyes

I hope this pic didn't give you a scare. But it sure gives me the creeps though!

This is how you make the octos:

With pork cocktail sausages, use a sharp fruit knife to cut down the length of the sausage to about half its length. That's two legs. Then use the knife to split each (fat) leg into 4 legs, that makes a total of 8 legs. It's ok if the legs are unevenly sized - practice makes perfect.

Using the tip of the knife blade, make two tiny slits in the head part of the octo for the eye sockets. How far apart they are from each other or how slanty they are is entirely up to you. For evil eyes, cut the slits in a V.

Dip the sausages into gently boiling water for about 30 secs. The legs will curl up immediately, but cook them the full 30 secs so the head gets entirely cooked through. Take them out and let cool till you can handle them.

Using a pair of chopsticks, pick up a black sesame seed and gently push it into a slit so that only part of it is showing. Repeat for all the slits.

For the "dead" octopuses featured in this post, cut two thin strips of nori per eye and "glue" them down with a little water, if your sausage is dry.

I know. My octopuses don't have siphons, but that is easily explained. Ninja octos!

How to use an Onigiri Wrapper

Update July 2013: I found a video on YouTube which demonstrates how to tear the wrapper off when you want to eat it. The vid is shown at the bottom of this post.

I often feature nori-wrapped onigiris in my bentos (especially for Takoyaki), and a friend asked me to illustrate how to wrap the darn thing. So I made a video for it. As with many other things, practise and practise. Soon you'll be wrapping onigiris in 30 secs flat!

Aaaand here is a video I found on Youtube which shows you how to peel off the wrapper to eat the onigiri.