About
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 – 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.
Details
A materials fee of $30, included in the cost of the class, covers everything you need: bento ingredients, two styles of Japanese disposable bento boxes with lids, mini condiment containers, and a furoshiki for wrapping.
Project
You'll create two bento boxes in different styles to take home:
- Shokado style, with six compartments filled with an assortment of musubi, teriyaki salmon, rolled omelet and vegetable sides. You’ll incorporate the five traditional Washoku cooking styles.
- Traditional beef teriyaki bento for which we'll use techniques for artful, free-form bento building. You'll whip up a classic teriyaki sauce from a family recipe that's both versatile and delicious. Vegetarian option: tofu.
