Bento Bound

Bentos are a Japanese concept that I love. According to the book, "A Dictionary of Japanese Food" by Richard Hosking (if you are interested in Japanese food you should own this book), a bento is "[a] boxed meal consisting of rice, pickles, and any number of accompanying foodstuffs." These boxed meals are always beautifully presented. If you would like to read some more introductory info on the bento, I wrote another post here. You are going to be seeing this topic brought up from time to time in the future as I try to hone my bento-making skills for Squirrel's (future) lunches.

Today for lunch I made one of Squirrel's (and my) favorite things to eat: onigiri, a kind of rice ball. These are wonderful to put into a bento.

For today's onigiri, I added a little bit of tuna and hijiki (a nutrient-rich seaweed), rice wine vinegar and soysauce, and then lightly grilled them on each side.

FM's Tuna Onigiri

Makes 4 rice balls

2 cups freshly cooked Japanese rice (any short grain rice will do), kept warm

1 1/2 Tbsp soy sauce

1 1/2 Tbsp rice wine vinegar

3 Tbsp canned tuna, drained

1 Tbsp hijiki

1. Place the hijiki in a small strainer and rinse. Place in bowl of warm water and soak for about 5 minutes. Strain and rinse again. Chop to the desired size.

2. Mix the soy sauce and rice wine vinegar together and then pour over the rice. Gently mix the rice and liquid together.

3. Add the tuna and hijiki to the rice, and mix.

4. Shape the rice balls.**

5. Place onto a lightly greased baking tray.

6. Pre-heat a barbecue grill or grill pan over high heat.

7. Carefully place each rice ball (large side down) on the the grill, and cook each side briefly, just long enough to lightly toast the surface.

8. Serve immediately, or allow them to cool completely and wrap each one in foil or saran wrap and put them into your bento.

**Shaping the rice balls: There are two ways that this can be done: by hand or by using a mold. I do it both ways, depending on my mood, and depending on the ingredients. Today I did it using a mold, as it gets a little messy doing it by hand with the soy sauce in the rice. There are wonderful instructions on both methods that can be found here (scroll down to see the instructions on shaping by hand).

**The recipe amounts are approximations. You can add more or less of any ingredient depending on who will be eating them. You can also add a variety of other ingredients depending on your mood!

Squirrel's onigiri was gone before I could even get a picture of her eating it!