Bentos and Musubi: Beautiful Lunch Boxes

Is there a more exciting lunch than a bento box? Whether you're packing lunches for school or work, for travel or picnics, a fully loaded bento is a box full of happiness. 

Together, we’ll incorporate the five Washoku cooking styles into a Shokado bento, which is often created as a miniature traditional kaiseki meal. This is an excellent introduction to Washoku cooking and its principles: 5 colors, 5 tastes, and 5 cooking methods. We will fry, simmer, steam, roast, and pickle. 

Proposed menu (changes with seasonal availability): 

• Nama: (raw/cutting/pickling) carrot flowers, star radishes, spiral cucumbers, quick pickles
• Niru: (simmering) chicken and daikon and spinach gomaae
• Yaku: (grilling/roasting) beef or tofu teriyaki and rolled omelet and sweet potato
• Musu: (steaming) rice
• Ageru: (deep-frying) lotus root and kabocha winter squash

This class begins at lunchtime, so we'll start immediately by making a quick lunch of onigirazu, a delicious and fun twist on a sandwich. If origami and sushi had a love child, it would be this.

Then we’ll build our bentos. There’s a little science to it: We’ll explore time-tested designs and ingredient ratios. We’ll learn which foods travel well, and how to keep them healthy and tasty at room temperature. There’s a lot of art to it: We’ll play with an assortment of musubi rice molds and vegetable shape cutters. We’ll flavor and decorate them guided by color, taste, and texture – and fun. We'll create two bento boxes for you to take home. 

The skills you’ll practice:

• How to teriyaki – quick skillet teriyaki
• How to tamagoyaki – roll an omelet
• How to onigirazu – a rice sandwich to go
• How to furoshiki – carry your bento home in style

You’ll gain a deeper understanding of Washoku, the ancient Japanese food traditions that make meal preparation fun as well as transformative for your health.

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