I Tried to be a Bento Master (and failed).

if you've ever watched an anime that takes place in a school setting chances are you've seen a Bento or two sometimes it's used as a way for a character to show affection for another character sometimes it's used to show that the character is a skilled cook or establish that they're from a rich family sometimes it's used to set up a comedic bit and a lot of times it's just for the anime to flex how good they can make food look now if you combine the two anime Bento that is you get what we call Kiara Ben which is Bento made to resemble characters and I actually took a class with kahoe on how to make our very own catavan specifically Totoro and Pikachu we took the class through Washoe cook in Kanagawa which is a cooking class that specializes in teaching foreigners how to cook easy Japanese dishes except today we decided to challenge ourselves of learning how to make Kiara Ben with the help of Noriko Sensei and I'm going to show you the step-by-step process on how we made the Bento starting with Pikachu number one for the ears you need to crack two eggs into a bowl and mix it with one teaspoon of Dashi powder 3 teaspoons of sugar one tablespoon of water and a pinch of salt add some olive oil into a tamagoyaki pan and once it's hot pour a quarter of the egg mixture in coating the pan in a thin layer of egg and make sure you break the air bubbles once the layer is half cooked use your chopsticks to start rolling the egg towards the handle once the first layer is rolled move it back up to the front and pour another quarter of the egg mixture in the pan and repeat the process you're basically going to roll the tamagoyaki into itself like an egg snowball until you've used up all the egg mixture after slicing off the imperfect ends cut the tamagoyaki into four pieces and Bam you got yourself some Pikachu ears on standby if you want to make heart-shaped eggs for additional decoration cut the tamagoyaki in Forts and then cut those pieces in half diagonally and once you put them together they become cute little hearts Noriko Sensei pre-prepared some egg crepe sheets but the way you make those is by pouring a quarter of the egg mixture into the tamagoyaki pan and not rolling it so it comes out like a thin sheet instead to make egg flower decorations cut one of your egg crepes in half and then fold it in half trim the ends and then take the folded side and make one centimeter cuts across the sheet making sure not to cut all the way through roll up the sheet and stick a small piece of uncooked spaghetti through the stems so it stays together they sort of resemble paper flowers right Noriko Sensei taught us another quick and easy vento filling side dish where you take Chico fish cake and cut them into thirds throw them in a bowl with a spoonful of powdered seaweed Flakes a teaspoon of Japanese mayo and microwave it for 30 seconds oh I forgot to mention you also throw in a spoonful of soy sauce normally it's meant to be fried to be made into isobayage but this is a faster alternative for the mornings where you just don't have time to dirty another pan and of course if tikua and powdered seaweed flakes are not easily accessible or not to your liking this is just a space filler for bento so you could realistically add pretty much whatever you want to add variety to your Caravan of course no Bento is complete without those iconic octopus shaped sausages so we cut some small sausages in half and used a sausage cutter to make the octopus shape they were a little hard and messy to use so I prefer to use a knife to make the cuts but these are handy for if you want the least chance of injury saute the octopus sausages in the tamagoyaki pan and if you'd like add a teaspoon of ketchup for that extra flavor now for Pikachu's head using a piece of plastic wrap scoop some rice onto it with a little indent add salmon flakes to the filling and then wrap it up and form it into the shape of Pikachu's chubby little head then wrap the rice ball head with one of those egg crepe sheets these egg sheets at Noriko Sensei had ready were circular shapes so for these particular sheets make sure you're using a small circular pan instead of the rectangular tamagoyaki pan place the head in the bento box and add the ears for all of the little face details Noriko Sensei pre-prepared the Nori already punched out and ready for assembling to save us time for these she used Nori Cutters which punch out your desired shape for you which is a lot easier and neater than painstakingly cutting the shapes out yourself with scissors but obviously if you don't have Nori Cutters you're gonna have to cut them with scissors or an X-Acto or something use a toothpick to carefully Place Nery details onto the head for the whites of the eyes we used a very small circle puncher to cut holes into sliced white cheese for Pikachu's bright red cheeks take a stick of imitation crab and carefully peel off the red layer with a toothpick then take a small circle cutter and cut out the shape of Pikachu's red cheeks and stick them on with a little bit of mayonnaise you can use the same technique to make a Pokeball which Noriko Sensei had readily prepared using Whitefish cake Nori and the red imitation crab skin after finishing Pikachu's face we filled up the space around it by adding in our prepared Bento ingredients like the octopus sausage heart-shaped eggs egg flowers chica fish cake lettuce and some steamed broccoli after all the cattle bench shouldn't just be cute ideally it should also be balanced and Bam one very cute Pikachu cat have been completed now on to Totoro to replicate totoro's gray color we used a mortar and pestle to grind up black sesame seeds into a fine-ish powder it was my very first time using one of these and I loved hearing the sesame seeds crackle and they smelled really really good okay afterwards we added it to white rice and mix it together until it had a nice speckled gray color similarly to how we shaved Pikachu's head we used plastic wrap to shape the rice into totoro's body then we repeated the same process with less rice to form the triangle shaped ears for totoro's white belly take a little bit of white rice add a spoonful of salmon flakes in the indent and then shape it into a circle press it onto the Totoro body and make sure you leave space for his face details for the whites of totoro's eyes use a boba straw to cut the shape out of sliced white cheese and then use tiny cut Nori for his pupils and of course we use Nori for the belly detailing too although it's a bit difficult to find Nori Cutters for this specific shape so these have to be cut by hand for decorating the negative space around Totoro Noriko Sensei suggested following the theme of forest and nature so we arranged the steamed broccoli to look like Toto was sitting on top of the trees then we stuck an egg heart above him and threw in a couple egg flowers we also flipped over the octopus sausages so they resembled flowers this is when we learned that even when you use the same Bento ingredients for different kind of Ben you can find unique ways to arrange them to fit the theme after squeezing in the chico fish cake this Bento looked extra packed and scrumptious and for the finishing touches we used a cat ear Nori punch to make the triangle nose and uncooked spaghetti for the whiskers and tana you have some beautifully constructed kataben I think Tahoe and I did a pretty good job working as a team and these turned out so much cuter than I thought they would now these looked really good but how did they taste Pikachu all that hard work it does honestly I feel like the cuteness makes it taste better you appreciate the food more yeah oh my God spoiler it tasted really really good we felt a little guilty destroying our adorable Creations but they tasted so good we couldn't stop eating once we started and you might think the Bento boxes look pretty small but these lunches were surprisingly really filling probably because we crammed every nook and cranny with ingredients but it was a very satisfying reward for all of her hard work we got to take home the instruction sheets for the cataband that we made and it gave me an idea what if I used some of the skills that I learned in this class and tried making my own Cat event and that's exactly what I did strap in loser videos not over yet I really wanted to try my hand at making a Bento that looked like Sailor Moon and another Bento that looked like Cairo from Cardcaptor Sakura starting with sketches of what sort of design I was going for I purchased a few Bento tools from Amazon and Daiso like Nori punchers cookie cutters tiny scissors anything that could help make my life easier I got all the necessary ingredients read through the instruction sheets Noriko Sensei gave me woke up bright and early to start prepping the ingredients exactly how I was taught there was no way I could fail I'm an artist so I should have a natural affinity for this type of craft right right [Music] how did I mess it up this pain no Rico Sensei you made it look so easy I I can't serve this look at the reveal yes three what the what so listen there's a few factors that contributed to my first attempts failing miserably in an attempt to replicate usagi's light peachy skin color I purchased a chestnut mix that you're supposed to cook with your rice and I had the bright idea of mashing up the chestnuts before adding them to the rice so they'd add more color but I think it just made the rice extra starchy and did nothing color wise so I was left with still white rice that was so sticky and clumped together you could pick up the whole thing of the rice paddle the rice is one of the most important parts of the calaban so I already effed up there number two I did not take into account the amount of Bento space I had to work with or how small some of my pieces really had to be so all the proportions ended up kind of whack and I hardly had any space to add the extra ingredients so what you're left with is a not very cohesive or cute looking Bento number three and my biggest mistake I was trying to make two bentos at once I really thought I could pull a Noriko Sensei and whip out two bentos in one sitting and have them both be delicious but I spread myself too thin and ended up making two mediocre cold bentos instead of putting all of my energy and power into one on top of that one of my judges Connor had to leave to catch a flight in an hour so I felt the pressure of having to rush and complete them in time cannabins require time and patience and I broke that cardinal rule like a fool [Music] shapes hang on I'm looking for the right shapes here number four Connor doesn't like fish cake we'll try the fish cake you don't like fish cake no no you don't like food wait you don't like Odin you don't like Odin I I like it in the hot pot but I cannot believe this trash that's not on me that's on him for having bad taste so it wasn't a success but I'm an artist I accept failure and think well I suck at making carabentos and I wasted a lot of time and effort why bother no we're gonna do it again strapping losers video's still not over I decided to make a second attempt except this time I would work on one Bento at a time starting with Cairo here's how I corrected it number one I didn't try to do anything experimental with the rice or any of the ingredients this time I stuck with what I knew and what I know is that white rice cooked in my rice cooker tastes amazing so that's exactly what I did no more stickiness or hardness just good old fluffy rice number two I wrapped cairo's head and ears in an egg crepe like I had originally planned to do similar to how Noriko Sensei did it with Pikachu's head I used plastic wrap to help keep that smooth balled up shape number three I punched out more accurate Nori shapes for Caro's eyes and nose during my first attempt I made the eyes and inner ear parts too big and completely forgot the nose so it didn't even look like Arrow it then occurred to me that perhaps I should have put the parts together on some test rice beforehand so I could be sure they were proportionate to the character but hey I learned here's a Bento tip if you're using a Nori puncher and it looks like one of these stencil things make sure the shape you're cutting has Jagged edges so it'll actually cut through the Nori sheet if it doesn't have those Jagged edges it will not work those are meant for softer things like cheese ham and fish cake it also helps to have one of these silicone mats to place underneath the Nori so that it'll cut easier I also recommend cutting out extra shapes because Nori is extremely fragile and chances are you'll break a few of them cherry blossom shaped carrots were a little weird cherry blossoms should be pink so I used ham and they turned out great and then I accidentally crushed the cutter in the garbage disposal right afterwards but it did its job and it will be remembered fondly and this is how attempt number two turned out wow look at that doesn't that look so much better now the appearance has certainly approved but how is the taste Connor I know the last one was not good and so I remade it I perfected the recipe okay perfected and you have to be honest okay was I not honest enough last time no you were honest I feel like I could have been more honest well you need to be 100 honest that looks way better already yeah what do you think what do you think it looks way better yeah is this from the um I don't know it's not like a burmes from Sailor Moon that's from Cardcaptor soccer is you know how like the last one it like looked depressing yes like the colors weren't as vibrate I I realized this broccoli looks more alive I realized my biggest mistake was I was trying to make two in it was not moved actually nice broccoli oh okay good I'm a big Broccoli Guy that's good okay good sausage all right let's crack this boy's face open okay oh no I'm so sorry the rice looks better than last time yeah oh he has salmon in there as well yeah okay that's so much better yay yeah it's like actually good oh [ __ ] yeah now to reattempt my pathetic Sailor Moon Bento here's how I corrected this one number one it turns out the secret to getting that light peachy color from my rice was in my fridge the entire time it's miso simply take a bit of rice and mix some miso into it until you get your desired peachy color don't be too heavy-handed with it though because miso while delicious is quite salty so for that reason I decided to opt out of adding The Salted salmon filling number two in attempt one I made her head too damn big there was hardly any space left for her signature pigtails so this time around I used less rice and of course since her head was smaller I also have to downsize the shapes I cut out for the Tiara and Bun accessories number three simpler facial expression listen anime eyes are really really hard to replicate in a Bento like it's already a struggle to make two identical anime eyes when I draw so imagine trying to do with fragile seaweed paper so I figured out the perfect facial expression that was easy to punch out and still captured usagi's personality number four I made her hair more pronounced I took the extra effort to wrap her meatball buns and egg crepe and for her pigtails I cut off pieces of the tamagoyaki so that they'd be shaped more like her hair and less like two ugly egg rectangles that didn't look anything like hair if you look at my first attempt you'll also notice that some of the other ingredients crowd around the pigtails covering them up and making them harder to notice to combat this I place the ingredients around her head first to make a sort of platform for her pigtails and then place the egg pigtails on top so that they pop out more and this is how Sailor Moon attempt number two turned out I was really proud of how this one turned out and I even added a few extra ham Hearts to match the new facial expression now to see if it passed a taste test what do you think I could I see it now is it yeah better I see it yeah much better cuter than the first attempt yeah the rice is miso flavored because that's how I got her skin color um try the meatball oh meatball in her bun because she's meatball head um good what happened you rolled up hmm I'm not your eye now okay it's good yay yay I did it my Bento Redemption Arc had finally been successful maybe with a third or fourth try I can make them look even better but for now I was happy with the glow ups Caravans are a bit difficult but they're a lot of fun to make of course you don't necessarily have to make a character to make a good looking Bento using the exact same ingredients I put together this very normal looking Pento which is equally as delicious much easier and faster to put together and still very pretty on its own in my opinion you can choose to disagree if you'd like I just wanted to try tackling this new art form and I actually learned a lot which I owe to Noriko sensei's very fun lessons I definitely want to try making some more characters in the future like guoba and kopinchan so if I'd ever do attempt those I'll be sure to post them on my Instagram and YouTube Community page big thank you again to Shibuya kahoe for finding and taking the Washoe cook class with me links to both her socials and Washoe Cook's website will be linked in the description admittedly this video was supposed to be done way sooner and be way simpler except I didn't anticipate screwing up and having to explain it but hope you enjoyed seeing me struggle and if you end up making your own kataban please tag me on Twitter so I can see it okay see you around or after the holidays [Music]

Channel: Emirichu

Views: 1,465,166

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Id: ZEKq4RhdoTM

Length: 18min 30sec (1110 seconds)

Published: Sat Dec 17 2022