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!

Teddies to the rescue!

Alas! The sea creatures that were bent on world domination have been vanquished by the furry teddies, which are covered in pork floss and featured with nori punchouts as well as tomato skin cutouts.

The cucumber sticks mark the grave of the octopuses, while the joyful teddies receive their gold reward in the form of yummy wedges of clementine. Clementine wedges look like gold ingots, don't they?

World Domination by sea creatures!

I cooked up a batch of cocktail sausages last night, and since the kids were all asleep, there was time to make some fancy details. Pushing the eyes in almost killed me though!

 

Takoyaki brought the last of the mantous 馒头, along with sausages, clementine wedges, longans, strawberries, couple cherry tomatoes, and cuke sticks.

Mr Roast Meat has the evil-looking sausage octopuses, along with breadsticks, and a subset of his sister's fruits and vegetables combo.

Is it obvious that I'm clearing out my stash?

Completed under time restriction

What a long day! I've been on my toes the whole day and only just found the chance to sit down and type up this post.

Mr Roast Meat requested for garlic herb toast (recipe for the garlic spread is at my Natural Parenting blog). I managed to stuff in some cucumber shurikens, clementine wedges, pork floss rolls and a cheese wedge before he rushed off to wait for the school bus.

Takoyaki's hot lunch in school was pork slices on fresh udon, cuke and tomato on the side, and a kiwifruit. The food jar carried the soup for the noodles.

I'm going to rest for a few minutes before heading to the kitchen to prepare Takoyaki's bento for tomorrow. More cooking! When all I want to do is hit the sack!

Egg moulds

I absolutely adore these guys, because they're soooo cute! And of course they're very versatile. Other than moulding hardboiled eggs, my most common use for them is, actually, to mould bread (such as in all these posts)!

The bottom of the mould, as can be seen in the orange bunny, can be used to make cutouts from cheese and ham, and possibly a slice of bread. I haven't tried this function yet though.

The bunny, fish, bear and car moulds are all from the Yude Tama range, and are good for eggs about 55g. Any bigger and the egg white will stick out and result in a rough/broken egg (a failed example is in this post), and smaller eggs will not fill up the mould completely, which means part(s) of the shape go missing, eg. the ears of the bear or the mouth of the fish.

The star and heart moulds are from Daiso, and they're so huge, they need at least 60g eggs to fill up the space! With smaller eggs, the shapes simply do not come through well.

For a step by step photo tutorial on how to mould hardboiled eggs with these babies, hop on over to bento guru Maki's post.

Mantou - your basic Chinese "bao"

By request, both kids want these buns today, so they get them! Saves effort coming up with different things each day.

Takoyaki will also be bringing a very ugly hardboiled egg bunny (failure) which she wants to eat with kicap manis (sweet black sauce) but we don't have that, haha! In the sauce container is just regular thick black sauce. I tried to make amends by using the same mould to make a bunny bun with Nutella filling (success).  The fruit factor is rose apple (jambu air)

Mr Roast Meat has his mantou with seaweed chicken and dragonfruit.

Sando Stamp retry

So this time I bought a loaf of white bread so the embossed designs can be seen more clearly.

Cheese sandwiches, BCH pork floss rolls, almonds and pistachios, and blanched french beans for Mr Roast Meat.

Sleep in Sunday

Both Mr RM and Takoyaki have to go out early tomorrow morning, and I don't have anything that they can prepare or eat on their own for breakfast. So these are for them, then they won't have to wake me up to ask what's for breakfast. I hate having to answer that question!

Onigiris with edamame and onigiris with homemade green tea furikake (recipe from Just Bento), which the kids love with their rice. Cherry tomatoes and BCH pork floss rolls on the side.

I WANT TO SLEEP IN TOMORROW MORNING WITH THE TOT!

Friday aka run out of steam

Takoyaki didn't want a bento today but agreed to bring some fruits since we have so many (most of them her favourites) and also so that she can spend her pocket money on other foods instead of fruits (yeah, she's like that). Featured are some rose apples (jambu) and longans.

Mr Roast Meat brought one of his favs too - scallion tamagoyaki (recipe below). Matched with some quadrattini and watermelon, which didn't make it into Takoyaki's box because it wasn't cut in time, heh!

Recipe for Scallion Tamagoyaki (makes enough for 2)

Ingredients:

2 eggs (55-60g)

1 tbsp mirin / sake / Chinese rice wine (白米酒)

1 pinch salt

One Chinese scallion (the thick kind, or the equivalent of in Malaysian/Thai spring onions), very finely chopped

Method:

Beat all ingredients well in a small mixing bowl, adding the scallions last.

Heat on low to medium heat, and lightly oil the lower pan of a HappyCall Pan (I've a Deep Ochre).

Spread the oil all over, either with a paper towel or a turner.

Turn the fire down to low and pour the egg mixture into the pan, tilting to spread out. Use a turner to spread the scallions evenly.

When the top of the egg sheet is almost set (but not yet!) quickly use the turner to flip and fold up one of the shorter ends, and roll up the sheet into a flattened log. Let cook on very low heat for about 30secs more on each side. Remove from heat, let cool for 5 min before slicing into desired thickness.

Cheater Bear Bento

 

And the bears are all picks, muahahahaha! All from stash - seaweed chicken, Ritz cheese crackers and cherry tomatoes. For Roast Meat who does not want to eat "as much as the honey mustard chicken bento day".

Mee sua soup

One of Takoyaki's favourite meals. With pork slices, 菜心 (caixin), broccoli and mango cubes.

Too many containers bento

Takoyaki loves the bagels from Yamazaki, so we got two packs (one's for the rest of us). Hence her lunch in school today (Wed), is ye olde bagel with yogurt, cranberries, half a momotaro tomato, longans and grapes. Don't ask me what I was thinking. I have no idea either.

Buses

Yup. That's it.

Honey Master

My friend JC once posted on her FaceBook about how the girl standing in line in front of her at Subway wanted "Honey Master" with her sub. And that's how I will always regard Honey Mustard Chicken (recipe below).

Takoyaki brought some honey mustard chicken to school for recess. The boneless, skin-on chicken legs were cooked in bulk for dinner last night. She's also got cute little sandwiches (cut by another new toy of mine) filled with either cream cheese or jam. And grapes.

Mr Roast Meat is bringing the same chicken over mixed multigrain rice, with stirfried leek and dried shrimps, cherry tomatoes and grapes on the side.

That's my new Magewappa box! I gave him strict instructions NOT to go and play at the basketball court after eating today, but to stay with his bento at the table, since he's coughing anyway. I warned him I would kill him if he cracked or lost my box.

Recipe for Honey Mustard Chicken

2kg boneless skin-on chicken legs

1/2 cup honey

3 tbsp Dijon mustard

1 tsp garlic powder OR 2 cloves minced garlic

1/2 tsp paprika

1/2 tsp dried parsley

salt and pepper to taste

Combine all ingredients in a large bowl or pot, using your hands to rub the mixture all over the chicken. Cover and refrigerate overnight.

Lightly oil a grill pan or frying pan and set it on medium heat. Grill/fry each leg on each side for about 5min, till both sides are a lovely brown. Set aside to rest for at least 10 min before serving.

Alternatively, line a big roasting pan with foil for easy cleanup and bake these yummies at 180C for about 30-35min.

Bear pocket sandwich

Here's a new tool! It's a pocket sandwich maker. It's much smaller than I expected, but it fits just nice onto a normal slice of sandwich bread.

So since I have this new tool, I must use it right? Mr Roast Meat will be having a pocket sandwich made using the super kawaii bear sando maker. It's filled with leftover roast chicken mixed with some Jap mayo (not sweet), and the features are 2 M&Ms, a dollop of Nutella for the nose and ketchup for the mouth. On the side are some salad (kosong, he doesn't want ANY dressing, weird boy), and grapes.

I hope you eat properly Mr Roast Meat!