Today, Marc and Maki make bentos with oysters.

Marc serves up oysters along with rice cooked in a savory oyster dashi.

Maki sautes oysters in butter

and glazes them with an umami-rich miso sauce.

A Pakistani bento maker adds heated charcoal to a pot

to make a smoky Pakistani-style curry.

She adds this to her tortilla wrap bento.

We love bento!

(The Global Lunchbox 7-18)

Welcome to BENTO EXPO,

your guide to the wonderful delicious world of bento.

Thank you for joining us.

Maki and I love seeing the delicious-looking bentos

you submit to us through the BENTO EXPO website.

They are packed with wonderful ideas.

So let's start by checking a few of them out.

OK!

First from Pakistan, a bento packed with smoky flavor.

Hi everyone, my name is Urouge Raza, I'm from Pakistan.

Urouge is a new bento maker who started making bento for her son Bassam last year.

He could share with his friends.

It's a good way to make friends as well.

Today, she is making "dum ka keema,"

a spiced ground meat dish for her bento.

She adds cubes of frozen garlic and ginger,

garam masala and spices to her ground beef,

and then she kneads everything together with her hand.

It smells amazing.

I bet it does.

After sauteeing the seasoned beef, Urouge does something special.

She lights a piece of charcoal, and adds it to the pot

along with some olive oil to smoke the meat.

After five minutes, she removes the charcoal

and her "keema" is infused with loads of smoky flavor.

It has been passed down to me by my grandmother.

It is absolutely delicious.

To make it easy to eat, she wraps the dum ka keema in a tortilla.

With vegetables arranged like butterflies and pomegranate seeds,

Bassam has a fun and nutritious bento to take to school

and show his friends.

I love bento!

Next, a bento made by an Italian student living in the UAE.

Today, I'll be showing you how we make one of our Italian lunch boxes.

Linda's using a cute butterfly-shaped pasta called "farfalle" to make her main dish.

She starts by sauteing three colors of cherry tomatoes with olive oil and oregano.

Now I'm going to add my tuna and olives.

And then I'll mix it and I'll let it cook for five minutes.

To finish it off, she adds boiled farfalle to the pan

and tosses everything together.

They look like butterflies fluttering around a spring garden.

So what's next?

We're going to work on our orange and fennel salad.

Fennel is a common salad ingredient in Italy

with a crisp texture like celery and the sweet flavor of licorice.

And now we're going to move on to our orange.

Linda seasons her refreshing salad with olive oil, salt, and pepper.

It's a great combo that will go so well with the pasta.

And finally, I can eat this fresh, colorful, and nutritious meal.

And there we go.

It's such a bright and fresh bento.

So how is it?

It's amazing.

I love bento so much.

It's time to get started on our bentos.

OK.

Today, both Maki and I are going to be using oysters to make our bentos.

They are so rich in flavors and nutrition.

In fact, here in Japan, we call them the "milk of the ocean."

So Marc, what are you going to make for your bento today?

Well, I'm going to be cooking these oysters with these ingredients

to make oyster rice bento.

It's mouthwatering.

Oyster rice is a popular bento dish here

because it's loaded with sweet and savory flavors,

and the plump oysters make it super satisfying.

First, we need to clean our oysters.

I've got the oysters in a big bowl here.

And we're going to go ahead and add some baking soda here.

And stir this around with our hand like this.

Baking soda is going to help scrub them clean

but it's also going to neutralize any odors in the oysters.

You can start seeing some of that gray slime coming out of the oyster there.

We want to get rid of that.

Rinse them off until the water runs clear.

And just look at how sparkling clean they are.

We're going to braise the oysters in a savory sweet sauce.

So add the sake, soy sauce, mirin and sliced ginger to a pot,

and bring it to a boil.

Once it no longer smells like alcohol, add the oysters.

It smells so nice.

So you cook the oyster first?

Yup, by cooking the oysters first, we're able to season them

and then we're going to use the braising liquid to cook our rice

which will prevent the oysters from getting over-cooked.

Great idea.

Thanks, Maki.

After simmering for about eight minutes,

the oysters should be cooked through and packed with flavor.

So, let's let them cool to room temperature.

Then I'm going to strain the braising liquid into a measuring cup

and add enough water to cook the rice.

Now I'm going to add this to a heavy-bottomed pot of washed rice.

Cover this with the lid,

and cook this using the method we always use for cooking rice, which is...

boil, simmer, and steam!

Set the stove to high heat until it comes to a boil.

Then, lower the heat all the way and cook for 12 minutes before turning off the heat to steam.

Wow.

So beautiful!

So this rice may look pretty plain but it's got tons of oyster flavor in there.

I can smell the oysters.

Amazing.

To finish off the rice, top it with the plump juicy oysters.

And my oyster rice is done.

Wow, look at that!

So, Maki, are you ready to try out my oyster rice?

Yes!

Go ahead.

(This food was prepared in a separate, hygienically controlled environment.)

The oysters are plump and full of flavor.

The rice is infused with the umami from the oysters.

It's delicious.

I like it!

I packed my flavorful oyster rice with "tamagoyaki" and a rainbow of veggies.

This oyster rice is a protein-packed way to add a ton of flavor to rice

so it's perfect for bento.

So Maki, what are you going to make with the oysters today?

I'm going to make super easy and delicious miso-butter oyster!

That sounds like a match made in heaven.

In Japan, oysters are often paired with miso like in this oyster hot pot.

The nutty flavor of the miso pairs beautifully with the briny oysters,

so let's see how Maki brings them together in her bento.

Maki starts with the sauce.

For the sauce, add miso, sugar, sake...

and peanut butter.

Oh, that's different.

Yeah, and mix well.

Peanut butter and miso go very well together.

It's fragrant and mellow.

Kids love it, too.

It smells so nutty and earthy.

Right?

The sauce is done.

To help the oysters hold onto the flavorful sauce,

Maki coats her cleaned oysters with potato starch.

OK, let's turn this into miso-butter oyster.

OK, let's do it.

She melts some butter into a frying pan and pan-fries the oysters.

Fry for three to four minutes to brown both sides.

Sounds good.

And it already smells amazing.

Look how plump they are.

These are good enough to eat already, but they're about to get even better.

OK, let's finish this.

Add the sauce and mix them together for 10 to 20 seconds.

It smells amazing.

That combination of that peanut butter with that miso.

It's a match made in heaven.

OK, my miso-butter oyster is done.

It smells so good.

OK, so try my miso-butter oyster.

Wow, look at that, it's so beautiful.

It's like, plump and juicy.

How was that?

The inside is nice and creamy

and the outside has got a little bit of toastiness from that potato starch you put on the outside.

And it's just got so much umami.

That combination of that earthy nutty peanut butter with the miso...

I'm glad you like it.

To pack her bento, Maki arranges her oysters along with a vibrant array of fresh veggies.

For kids, she uses barley and sesame seeds to turn the oysters into a trio of chicks.

With loads of nutty and savory flavors, Maki's miso-butter oysters are perfect for bento.

Today both Maki and I used oysters to make bento-friendly items that'll power you up,

so we hope you'll...

give them a try!

Bento Topics.

Today, from the South American country of Colombia.

Coffee plantations spread across the mountainous landscape,

part of a World Heritage site.

Colombia is in fact one of the world's leading producers of coffee.

Coffee thrives in areas which have marked differences in daytime and nighttime temperatures

as well as a balance of wet and dry periods.

A secret to good coffee is to pick the beans by hand.

We harvest by hand to select only the ripe beans.

Also, to avoid breaking the branches.

After harvest, the red beans are peeled,

dried for 14 hours, then threshed, sorted, and roasted.

The bounties of nature, painstaking effort, and time

are the secrets to Colombia's world-famous coffee.

To protect the coffee trees from excessive sunlight,

the fields are planted with plantain trees with giant leaves.

Both the fruit and the leaves are essential to Colombian dishes.

Omaira and her daughter Ambar show us

how to make the bentos they serve at the coffee plantation.

Toasted plantain leaves are used to wrap various dishes to make "fiambre,"

a traditional meal commonly eaten by people who work outdoors.

Toasting the plantain leaf makes the fiambre taste better.

What will they wrap today?

Farm work requires stamina, so they're preparing three meat dishes.

A South American favorite, chorizo...

Salt-grilled pork chops...

and deep-fried pork belly.

Now for the vegetables.

Omaira makes a sauce with stir-fried red bell peppers and onions seasoned with cumin,

then adds fluffy potatoes.

The cumin enhances the flavor of the vegetables, making them a perfect pair for the meat.

Finally, she deep-fries thick slices of ripe plantains to make chips.

Crispy on the outside, soft and sweet inside.

A fiambre wouldn't be the same without them.

Delicious!

Time to wrap.

They heap the rice onto the fragrant plantain leaf

and cover it with the five dishes, plus a boiled egg.

Using natural resources close at hand as a sustainable container

reflects the wisdom of the past.

The fiambre is ready!

They deliver the fiambre to the farm workers.

They've all worked up a hefty appetite.

Dig in!

- So good.
- Oh, yes.

And to go with their bentos, a cup of coffee made with the fruits of their labor.

A perfect pairing.

We love bento!

The bentos packed with green leaves were so beautiful and looked delicious.

Yeah, it did, didn't it?

And I bet it will be great with a cup of coffee afterwards.

Maki and I love seeing the bentos you send in from around the world

through BENTO EXPO's website.

It's a chance to share your bentos with bento makers from around the world,

so send us a photo of a recent bento.

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!

Bye.