Season 7-2 Taimeshi Bento & Oyaki Bento

Today, Maki makes a Nagano specialty,

"oyaki" dumplings.

And Marc makes an Ehime specialty,

"taimeshi," sea bream with rice.

And from Canada,

a nine-year-old boy who loves Japan and bentos

makes onigiri for the very first time.

We love bento!

We love bento!

(The Global Lunchbox 7-2)

Welcome to BENTO EXPO,

your guide to the wonderful, delicious world of bento.

I'm Marc Matsumoto.

And I'm Maki Ogawa.

Thank you for joining BENTO EXPO.

We love seeing the delicious-looking bentos

sent in from around the world through our website!

They are so inspiring, too!

Yeah, they are, aren't they?

So let's start by taking a look at how a few of them were made!

OK!

Marsita grows tulips in her garden

and used them as inspiration for her bento.

I'm from Malaysia and I'm living in Japan.

Today, I will cook a Malaysian dish for a bento.

The secret to the colorful rice is butterfly pea flowers.

It's a traditional Malaysian dish made by soaking the flowers in water,

and using the liquid, as well as the chopped flowers, to cook the rice.

You can enjoy the taste of the flowers.

Look at that stunning color!

Then, Marsita packs the rice into a mold and...

And this is my blue tulips.

Beautiful!

To go with the rice, Marsita adds boiled mackerel,

fragrant lemongrass and shallots to a food processor.

Then she fries the mixture with coconut

and black pepper.

You can feel it like creamy and a bit spicy.

I bet this goes great with rice.

Marsita also makes a spicy shrimp salad with her homemade chili paste,

and some fried chicken seasoned with turmeric.

She surrounds her flowers with the coconut-mackerel flakes

and her colorful Tulip Garden Bento is done!

To unveil her bento, she holds a bento party with her son and some friends.

OK?

- Yummy!
- OK, good.

We love bento!

Next, nine-year-old George makes onigiri for the first time.

Hi, my name is George.

And I'm George's mom, Kate.

I love bento and I got interested in bento from watching BENTO EXPO.

George's interest in Japanese culture sprouted from his love of anime.

This is the very first bento he made, using chicken fingers.

Today, he's going to give onigiri a shot, so let's see how he does it.

Then we start molding those into nice, perfect balls.

That's the way I was first presented them from my anime.

I feel proud of my creation.

Great job, George!

Onigiri and salmon are a classic bento combination

and that smoked salmon looks delicious.

All right!

George also makes cupcakes for his bento.

It's one of his favorite desserts.

Put that in.

Then he coats the cupcakes with chocolate and shredded coconut.

Hmm, they look good!

- Excellent work.
- Yeah.

I like bento because it is delicious, and everything has its own place.

Wow, it's so colorful and those onigiri look perfect!

Umm...

Delicious!

We love bento!

It's time to get started on our bentos!

OK!

Today, both Maki and I are taking inspiration

from regional Japanese dishes for our bentos.

So Maki, what are you going to make for us today?

I'm going to make oyaki,

a very popular Japanese dumpling from Nagano Prefecture.

Oh, I love oyaki!

Traditional oyaki are made with

dough wrapped around a vegetable or sweet filling

and they're cooked over embers.

These days, they're packed with almost anything

and Maki's going to show you an easy way to make them from scratch.

They're fun to make and easy to eat with your hands.

OK, let's make the oyaki dough using a food processor.

Add flour, oil, baking powder, salt,

brown sugar, and mashed potato.

Mashed potato keeps the dough soft.

Maki adds some warm water,

and then she runs the food processor for 30 to 40 seconds

until the dough comes together.

And look!

That dough looks great!

She covers and lets the dough rest for about 30 minutes

and moves on to make the filling.

She combines ground pork with chopped and salted cabbage,

scallions, soy sauce, salt and pepper,

and then she mixes it together with her hand before dividing it into balls.

Flatten the meatball and wrap it around the boiled quail's egg.

A hearty filling.

Now, let's check the dough.

The dough is really stretchy!

It's time to wrap the oyaki.

She flattens out a piece of dough using flour to keep it from sticking,

puts the filling in the center, and stretches the dough

over the meat to seal it shut.

Trim off the excess dough

and press the oyaki into a hot pan, seam side down.

Oyaki is derived from a word that means "to grill or brown."

So make sure to brown the surface.

Nice color!

Once both sides are lightly browned,

Maki adds hot water to steam the buns for a few minutes

and get the filling cooked through.

Let's open!

Umm, looks so fluffy.

My oyaki is done.

Besides the ones with meat and egg,

Maki also made some with mashed "kabocha" filling.

"Itadakimasu."

The dough is so soft and chewy.

Its mildly sweet flavor goes well with the meaty filling.

It can be used to wrap all kinds of fillings.

Maki used some extra dough to make a bear-shaped oyaki

and decorated it with cheese and nori for kids.

There are so many possibilities here and I bet they're fun to make!

So Marc, what kind of local dish are you going to make today?

I'm going to be making an umami-packed rice dish

from Ehime Prefecture, called taimeshi.

It must be good!

Taimeshi, or sea bream rice, is packed with umami

and it's traditionally made with a whole fish cooked in a clay pot.

To simplify the process,

I'm going to show you a way to prepare it using sea bream filets

and I have a few tips for getting the most flavor out of them.

You'll need some skin-on sea bream filets that have been scaled and deboned,

and you want to set them on a few layers of paper towels.

The first thing we're going to do is salt the fish.

You want to give it a pretty generous sprinkle of salt on both sides.

Now what this is going to do is season it,

but it's also going to draw out excess moisture

and it's going to pull out any fishy smells along with it into the paper towels.

Now, we're just going to let this rest for about 15 minutes.

While we wait for that,

add the washed rice, sake, water and "konbu"

to the bowl of a rice cooker

and soak it for about 30 minutes.

Konbu, or kelp, adds tons of umami to the rice.

Once the fish has released some water,

I'm going to pat it dry and broil it in a toaster oven.

Get it in here.

The key is to brown the surface of the fish.

This is going to give our rice another layer of umami.

The browned skin is also going to add a marvelous layer of flavor.

Now, I'm going to add half the fish on top of the rice

and we're going to save the other one for when the rice is done.

Close the lid.

Let the rice cooker do its thing.

Once the rice is cooked, quickly add the other piece of fish,

and let it steam for ten minutes.

Oh! It looks so good and it smells amazing.

Go ahead and just break up the fish into small pieces

and we're going to stir that into the rice.

So the reason why we added the fish in two different additions

is we want to get that flavor of the fish into the rice,

but we also want to have that tender, soft fish in there.

And our taimeshi is done.

Itadakimasu.

Smells so good.

It's nice and toasty, because we grilled that fish first,

and we've got layers upon layers of umami from the fish and from the konbu,

and because we added the fish in two different additions,

we've got the flavor and the umami from the fish in the rice,

and we also have these beautiful pieces of moist fish on top.

I packed my taimeshi with "tamagoyaki" and simmered vegetables

and then topped the rice with "kinome,"

the fragrant leaves of the "sansho" pepper plant.

Using the simple tips I showed you today,

you can easily make this authentic taimeshi at home.

Today both Maki and I made bentos inspired by regional dishes

from two areas of Japan, so we hope you'll...

Give them a try!

Bento Topics.

Today, from one of Asia's most diverse countries, Singapore.

In 2020, Singapore's hawker culture

was listed as a UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage.

Hawker centers are food courts that serve a variety of cuisine,

including Chinese, Indian, and Malay.

They exemplify Singapore's diverse culture

and are essential to everyday life.

Since child, everybody, most of us go to the hawker center,

even for lunch and dinner.

Hawker centers first became popular in the 1960s.

Today, there are over 100 such centers throughout the country.

This stall, which specializes in rice bowls,

was recognized this year for its contribution to hawker culture.

Salmon drizzled with "mentaiko" sauce is seared

and placed on a bed of butterfly pea rice, evocative of a blue lagoon.

This colorful and delicious rice bowl draws large crowds.

I think that it's good that we have traditional and modern food in hawker centers.

I hope that we can promote the hawker culture to everyone around the world.

Singapore is the home of a bento maker

helping to promote bento culture.

Hello, I am Shirley. Welcome!

Shirley Wong is a bento artist

who has over 300,000 social media followers.

Her healthy sushi rolls and cute "kyaraben" made with everyday ingredients

have captured the hearts of bento fans worldwide.

She has a kitchen studio in her home

and a collection of over 1,000 bento-related products.

So I have an idea in my head, maybe what box matches the bento,

or what punches or what cutters I need to use

so that I can pick out the design.

Recently, she's started to focus on using imperfect produce.

Working with imperfect product is to reduce food waste.

It's a creative challenge. I'm excited.

Today, she's going to use Singaporean mango

in her chicken stir-fry.

She stir-fries the chicken with carrots and broccoli,

then adds soy sauce and other seasonings,

and a big serving of mango!

Umm, smells really nice!

With so much mango, it's bound to be refreshing.

Some brown rice.

She's going to top the healthy brown rice and tangy mango chicken

with eggs fried sunny side up.

She cooks the yolks side by side.

What's she planning?

Remember to cook the egg thoroughly.

She adds bits of cheese and nori.

And...

it's a kitty cat! A simple yet creative idea.

This is my mango chicken with imperfect vegetables kitty cat bento!

Great job, Shirley!

Does it taste as good as it looks?

Really nice!

I love bento!

Maki and I love seeing your bento submissions through the BENTO EXPO website.

So head over and post photos of your favorite flower-themed bentos,

like this one from Malaysia

or this one from the US.

It's a great place to share your ideas and get new bento inspiration.

Well, that's all the time we have for today,

but we hope you'll join us again here soon on BENTO EXPO.

See you soon.

Bye!