
Maki makes a bento with Oyaki, Nagano Prefecture's beloved dumplings. And Marc makes Ehime Prefecture's famous Taimeshi: sea bream with rice. From Singapore, a bento influencer!
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Today, Maki makes a Nagano specialty,
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"oyaki" dumplings.
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And Marc makes an Ehime specialty,
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"taimeshi," sea bream with rice.
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And from Canada,
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a nine-year-old boy who loves Japan and bentos
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makes onigiri for the very first time.
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We love bento!
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We love bento!
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(The Global Lunchbox 7-2)
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Welcome to BENTO EXPO,
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your guide to the wonderful, delicious world of bento.
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I'm Marc Matsumoto.
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And I'm Maki Ogawa.
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Thank you for joining BENTO EXPO.
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We love seeing the delicious-looking bentos
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sent in from around the world through our website!
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They are so inspiring, too!
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Yeah, they are, aren't they?
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So let's start by taking a look at how a few of them were made!
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OK!
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Marsita grows tulips in her garden
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and used them as inspiration for her bento.
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I'm from Malaysia and I'm living in Japan.
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Today, I will cook a Malaysian dish for a bento.
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The secret to the colorful rice is butterfly pea flowers.
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It's a traditional Malaysian dish made by soaking the flowers in water,
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and using the liquid, as well as the chopped flowers, to cook the rice.
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You can enjoy the taste of the flowers.
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Look at that stunning color!
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Then, Marsita packs the rice into a mold and...
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And this is my blue tulips.
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Beautiful!
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To go with the rice, Marsita adds boiled mackerel,
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fragrant lemongrass and shallots to a food processor.
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Then she fries the mixture with coconut
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and black pepper.
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You can feel it like creamy and a bit spicy.
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I bet this goes great with rice.
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Marsita also makes a spicy shrimp salad with her homemade chili paste,
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and some fried chicken seasoned with turmeric.
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She surrounds her flowers with the coconut-mackerel flakes
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and her colorful Tulip Garden Bento is done!
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To unveil her bento, she holds a bento party with her son and some friends.
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OK?
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- Yummy!
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We love bento!
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Next, nine-year-old George makes onigiri for the first time.
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Hi, my name is George.
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And I'm George's mom, Kate.
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I love bento and I got interested in bento from watching BENTO EXPO.
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George's interest in Japanese culture sprouted from his love of anime.
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This is the very first bento he made, using chicken fingers.
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Today, he's going to give onigiri a shot, so let's see how he does it.
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Then we start molding those into nice, perfect balls.
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That's the way I was first presented them from my anime.
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I feel proud of my creation.
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Great job, George!
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Onigiri and salmon are a classic bento combination
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and that smoked salmon looks delicious.
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All right!
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George also makes cupcakes for his bento.
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It's one of his favorite desserts.
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Put that in.
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Then he coats the cupcakes with chocolate and shredded coconut.
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Hmm, they look good!
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- Excellent work.
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I like bento because it is delicious, and everything has its own place.
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Wow, it's so colorful and those onigiri look perfect!
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Umm...
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Delicious!
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We love bento!
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It's time to get started on our bentos!
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OK!
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Today, both Maki and I are taking inspiration
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from regional Japanese dishes for our bentos.
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So Maki, what are you going to make for us today?
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I'm going to make oyaki,
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a very popular Japanese dumpling from Nagano Prefecture.
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Oh, I love oyaki!
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Traditional oyaki are made with
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dough wrapped around a vegetable or sweet filling
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and they're cooked over embers.
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These days, they're packed with almost anything
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and Maki's going to show you an easy way to make them from scratch.
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They're fun to make and easy to eat with your hands.
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OK, let's make the oyaki dough using a food processor.
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Add flour, oil, baking powder, salt,
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brown sugar, and mashed potato.
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Mashed potato keeps the dough soft.
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Maki adds some warm water,
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and then she runs the food processor for 30 to 40 seconds
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until the dough comes together.
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And look!
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That dough looks great!
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She covers and lets the dough rest for about 30 minutes
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and moves on to make the filling.
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She combines ground pork with chopped and salted cabbage,
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scallions, soy sauce, salt and pepper,
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and then she mixes it together with her hand before dividing it into balls.
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Flatten the meatball and wrap it around the boiled quail's egg.
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A hearty filling.
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Now, let's check the dough.
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The dough is really stretchy!
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It's time to wrap the oyaki.
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She flattens out a piece of dough using flour to keep it from sticking,
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puts the filling in the center, and stretches the dough
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over the meat to seal it shut.
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Trim off the excess dough
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and press the oyaki into a hot pan, seam side down.
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Oyaki is derived from a word that means "to grill or brown."
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So make sure to brown the surface.
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Nice color!
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Once both sides are lightly browned,
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Maki adds hot water to steam the buns for a few minutes
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and get the filling cooked through.
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Let's open!
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Umm, looks so fluffy.
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My oyaki is done.
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Besides the ones with meat and egg,
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Maki also made some with mashed "kabocha" filling.
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"Itadakimasu."
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The dough is so soft and chewy.
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Its mildly sweet flavor goes well with the meaty filling.
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It can be used to wrap all kinds of fillings.
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Maki used some extra dough to make a bear-shaped oyaki
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and decorated it with cheese and nori for kids.
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There are so many possibilities here and I bet they're fun to make!
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So Marc, what kind of local dish are you going to make today?
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I'm going to be making an umami-packed rice dish
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from Ehime Prefecture, called taimeshi.
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It must be good!
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Taimeshi, or sea bream rice, is packed with umami
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and it's traditionally made with a whole fish cooked in a clay pot.
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To simplify the process,
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I'm going to show you a way to prepare it using sea bream filets
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and I have a few tips for getting the most flavor out of them.
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You'll need some skin-on sea bream filets that have been scaled and deboned,
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and you want to set them on a few layers of paper towels.
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The first thing we're going to do is salt the fish.
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You want to give it a pretty generous sprinkle of salt on both sides.
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Now what this is going to do is season it,
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but it's also going to draw out excess moisture
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and it's going to pull out any fishy smells along with it into the paper towels.
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Now, we're just going to let this rest for about 15 minutes.
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While we wait for that,
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add the washed rice, sake, water and "konbu"
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to the bowl of a rice cooker
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and soak it for about 30 minutes.
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Konbu, or kelp, adds tons of umami to the rice.
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Once the fish has released some water,
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I'm going to pat it dry and broil it in a toaster oven.
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Get it in here.
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The key is to brown the surface of the fish.
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This is going to give our rice another layer of umami.
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The browned skin is also going to add a marvelous layer of flavor.
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Now, I'm going to add half the fish on top of the rice
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and we're going to save the other one for when the rice is done.
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Close the lid.
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Let the rice cooker do its thing.
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Once the rice is cooked, quickly add the other piece of fish,
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and let it steam for ten minutes.
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Oh! It looks so good and it smells amazing.
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Go ahead and just break up the fish into small pieces
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and we're going to stir that into the rice.
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So the reason why we added the fish in two different additions
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is we want to get that flavor of the fish into the rice,
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but we also want to have that tender, soft fish in there.
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And our taimeshi is done.
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Itadakimasu.
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Smells so good.
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It's nice and toasty, because we grilled that fish first,
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and we've got layers upon layers of umami from the fish and from the konbu,
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and because we added the fish in two different additions,
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we've got the flavor and the umami from the fish in the rice,
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and we also have these beautiful pieces of moist fish on top.
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I packed my taimeshi with "tamagoyaki" and simmered vegetables
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and then topped the rice with "kinome,"
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the fragrant leaves of the "sansho" pepper plant.
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Using the simple tips I showed you today,
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you can easily make this authentic taimeshi at home.
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Today both Maki and I made bentos inspired by regional dishes
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from two areas of Japan, so we hope you'll...
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Give them a try!
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Bento Topics.
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Today, from one of Asia's most diverse countries, Singapore.
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In 2020, Singapore's hawker culture
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was listed as a UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage.
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Hawker centers are food courts that serve a variety of cuisine,
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including Chinese, Indian, and Malay.
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They exemplify Singapore's diverse culture
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and are essential to everyday life.
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Since child, everybody, most of us go to the hawker center,
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even for lunch and dinner.
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Hawker centers first became popular in the 1960s.
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Today, there are over 100 such centers throughout the country.
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This stall, which specializes in rice bowls,
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was recognized this year for its contribution to hawker culture.
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Salmon drizzled with "mentaiko" sauce is seared
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and placed on a bed of butterfly pea rice, evocative of a blue lagoon.
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This colorful and delicious rice bowl draws large crowds.
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I think that it's good that we have traditional and modern food in hawker centers.
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I hope that we can promote the hawker culture to everyone around the world.
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Singapore is the home of a bento maker
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helping to promote bento culture.
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Hello, I am Shirley. Welcome!
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Shirley Wong is a bento artist
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who has over 300,000 social media followers.
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Her healthy sushi rolls and cute "kyaraben" made with everyday ingredients
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have captured the hearts of bento fans worldwide.
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She has a kitchen studio in her home
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and a collection of over 1,000 bento-related products.
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So I have an idea in my head, maybe what box matches the bento,
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or what punches or what cutters I need to use
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so that I can pick out the design.
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Recently, she's started to focus on using imperfect produce.
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Working with imperfect product is to reduce food waste.
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It's a creative challenge. I'm excited.
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Today, she's going to use Singaporean mango
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in her chicken stir-fry.
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She stir-fries the chicken with carrots and broccoli,
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then adds soy sauce and other seasonings,
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and a big serving of mango!
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Umm, smells really nice!
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With so much mango, it's bound to be refreshing.
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Some brown rice.
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She's going to top the healthy brown rice and tangy mango chicken
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with eggs fried sunny side up.
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She cooks the yolks side by side.
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What's she planning?
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Remember to cook the egg thoroughly.
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She adds bits of cheese and nori.
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And...
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it's a kitty cat! A simple yet creative idea.
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This is my mango chicken with imperfect vegetables kitty cat bento!
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Great job, Shirley!
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Does it taste as good as it looks?
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Really nice!
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I love bento!
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Maki and I love seeing your bento submissions through the BENTO EXPO website.
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So head over and post photos of your favorite flower-themed bentos,
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like this one from Malaysia
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or this one from the US.
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It's a great place to share your ideas and get new bento inspiration.
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Well, that's all the time we have for today,
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but we hope you'll join us again here soon on BENTO EXPO.
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See you soon.
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Bye!