Just Bento - meal in a box: healthy bento recipes, tips, and more

Bento no. 44: Pre-made inarizushi and bean sprout stir fry (vegan)

maki — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 14:29:01 +0000

Bento contents:

4 lower-calorie inarizushi with hijiki, 240 cal
Stir-fried bean sprouts, red chili pepper and garlic chives, 60 cal
Handful of frozen edamame, 50 cal

Total calories (approx): 360 (how calories are calculated)

Time needed: 5-10 minutes in the morning Type: Japanese, vegan

I made a batch of 24 inarizushi a couple of weeks ago, making them lower-calorie by adding lots of hijiki to the rice filling. I put 4 inarizushi each into Lock & Lock containers and stashed them in the freezer, and have been using them for bento every few days. I put them in the refrigerator the night before, and by lunchtime they are defrosted nicely.

In the other container is a simple stir fry with bean sprouts, garlic chives (nira) and a red chili pepper, which is cooked in minutes. The only calories of note are in the oil used (I used argan oil which needed using up, but you can use sesame oil or other flavorful oil). I also added a handful of edamame straight from the freezer, which defrosts fully by lunchtime.

If you are wondering where the protein is in this bento, it’s in the fried tofu wrappings on the inarizushi as well as the edamame.

A vegan, easy to digest, low-calorie yet filling bento, the main part of which is pre-made. A great time saving bento!

Recipe: Bean sprout and garlic chive stir fry

2 cups bean sprouts, washed
3-4 garlic chives or green onions
1/2 Tbs. sesame or argan oil
1 small red chili pepper, deseeded and chopped - or use dried red pepper flakes to save time
Salt and pepper, dash soy sauce

Heat up a frying pan with the oil. Add red chili pepper. Add garlic chives or green onions and stir-fry. Add bean sprouts and stir fry until it’s reduced to about a cup in volume. Season with salt, pepper and a little soy sauce. Cool before putting into bento box.

Glazed Triple-Soy Loaf

maki — Mon, 21 Jul 2008 15:59:25 +0000

I am always on the lookout for vegan/vegetarian protein recipes that are bento friendly, and this flat oven baked loaf is another one. It’s called triple-soy because it has tofu, edamame and miso in it. It has a very dense, rich texture with a sweet-salty glaze. One or two small squares are quite enough for a bento. It may fall apart a bit during transport, but that doesn’t affect the texture or flavor. If you can, put it in its own compartment in your bento.

This is adapted quite a lot from a recipe in one of Yumiko Kano’s vegan cookbooks. Her recipe used green peas, where I have used edamame for the higher protein content, and a lot of very Japanese ingredients that may be difficult to assemble outside of Japan. So I’ve experimented and used a lot of more universally available substitions. The only ingredient that you may not have on hand is kuzu powder (more about kuzu here), but it’s such a great thickening ingredient that it’s worth having on hand. Kuzu is superior to cornstarch, flour and so on since sauces thickened with it stay clear and thick even after cooling. But if you can’t get kuzu, just use cornstarch or potato starch instead.

Recipe: Glazed Triple-Soy Loaf

For the loaf:

1 extra-firm tofu (about 300g / 10 1/2 oz.)
1 cup shelled edamame
1 Tbs. miso (white miso is preferred, but any will do. If it’s very salty, omit the salt)
Pinch of salt
1/3 cup soft bread crumbs
2 Tbs. dessicated potato (for making instant mashed potatoes) OR 1 small potato, grated + 1 Tbs. cornstarch or potato starch
1 Tbs. tahini or peanut butter
2 Tbs. flour
Vegetable oil

For the glaze:

1 Tbs. kuzu powder or cornstarch
3 Tbs. water
1 Tbs. soy sauce
1 Tbs. mirin OR 2 tsp. maple syrup + 1 tsp more water
Some sesame seeds or kalongi (nigella) seeds or poppy seeds (optional)

Equipment suggested: Food processor

Preheat the oven to 200° C / 400° F. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper or a silicon baking sheet.

Press the water out of the tofu by placing it between two plates and leaving for a while.

To shell frozen edamame, pour some boiling water over then and drain; pop out the beans inside. You will probably need about 2 1/2 - 3 cups of whole edamame for 1 cup of shelled. (Alternatively use frozen green peas that have been defrosted.)

If you are using a raw potato and not desiccated potato, peel and grate it and mix with the cornstarch or potato starch

Drain and dry off the tofu. Put all the loaf ingredients except the edamame and oil into a food processor. Process until smooth. Add the edamame and pulse until the edamame is chopped up but not totally mashed. If it seems too moist, add 1 more tablespoon of dessicated potato or flour.

(If mixing by hand, finely mash the tofu or pass through a sieve, and combine well with the other ingredients. Roughly mash the edamame and add to the mix.)

Form the mix into a flat loaf (about 25cm / 8 inches or so square) on the lined baking sheet. Smooth the surface with a spatula or your hands and a little oil. Bake for 20-25 minutes, until very lightly browned on top and a bit firm.

While it bakes, make the glaze. Mix all the glaze ingredients together in a small pan until the kuzu is dissolved. Heat the pan over low-medium heat, mixing all the time, until the mixture becomes smooth and clear and thick.

Spread the glaze over the warm loaf, and scatter with sesame seeds or kalongi (nigella) seeds or poppy seeds (optional). Let cool completely, and cut into 9 squares (or smaller if you prefer).

This freezes well. To defrost, put into a very lightly oiled frying pan over medium-low heat, cover the pan and let steam-cook. You can also bring it frozen - it will defrost nicely by lunchtime.

Notes

To make this gluten-free, use gluten-free breadcrumbs and 2 Tbs. desiccated potato instead of the flour.
To make this spicy, use Kochujang instead of miso.
If you don’t have edamame, or don’t want to bother with shelling them, use frozen green peas.
Instead of baking as a loaf, make small patties with oiled hands and fry them in a frying pan.
The loaf is very interesting as a sandwich filling, or spread on crackers.

Lower-calorie higher fibre inarizushi with hijiki

maki — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 13:57:53 +0000

Inarizushi are excellent for bento, but they can be a bit high in calories since they are stuffed with sushi rice. The original version with a 100% rice filling has about 1/4 to 1/3 cup of rice per bag, which makes each inarizushi about 110 to 130 calories. On the other hand these inarizushi are about 80 to 100 calories per piece. The secret is in the filling.

I’ve mixed about 1/4 cup of stewed hijiki seaweed with carrots and shiitake mushrooms to every cup of sushi rice. The recipe for stewed hijiki is here - I just added a couple of raw shiitake mushrooms to it, omitted the fried tofu, and chopped up the carrots quite finely. I also used brown rice instead of white, for even more fibre and nutrition. An all-inarizushi bento with extra ingredients in the filling is, in fact, a pretty nutritionally complete vegan meal.

Hijiki and shiitake have almost no calories and are high in fibre and various minerals (more about hijiki), and carrots don’t have a lot of calories either, so adding them to the rice mixture is a good thing all around. Try mixing other things into the rice stuffing too!

Freezing and defrosting inarizushi

Inarizushi freezes very well, because the moist tofu skin protects the rice inside. Since I’ve stocked up on some Lock & Lock boxes, I’ve made batches of inarizushi and frozen them 3 or 4 at a time in 360ml boxes.

I’ve tried defrosting them in three ways:

Defrost the inarizushi all the way in the microwave in the morning, and cool. This method makes for the most moist, tastiest inarizushi.
Put them in the refrigerator the night before, and bring the halfway defrosted box for lunch. The inarizushi are defrosted all the way by lunchtime, though rather chilly inside.
Bring the frozen inarizushi straight from the freezer. The inarizushi can be very cold or still a bit frozen on the inside. If you intend to snack on the inarizushi later on in the day (e.g. to bring along to the gym after work), taking frozen ones may be a good idea.

Stocking stewed hijiki in the freezer too

Stewed hijiki keeps for about a week in the refrigerator, and also freezes very well. You can freeze it in small portions and then just pop a portion in a bento as a side dish, or mix it into rice, and so on. You can also mix some into a basic tamagoyaki to add texture, fibre and flavor. Here I used about 1/2 tablespoon for a 1 egg tamagoyaki.

Lock & Lock 'bento boxes' now available at Migros in Switzerland

maki — Mon, 14 Jul 2008 15:56:37 +0000

This is mainly of interest only to readers in Switzerland or in regions of France and Germany close enough to Switzerland to go shopping here. I couldn’t pass it up because it finally gives me a chance to talk about one of the most practical lines of bento-appropriate containers available, Lock & Lock.

Lock & Lock is a line of sturdy plastic containers that come in all sizes. They are microwave, dishwasher, freezer and of course food safe. The main feature is the locking, sealed lid which is almost 100% water-safe (if you fill it full with water and shake it upside down vigorously, it may leak a bit). Lock & Lock is available all around the world, but I spotted it for sale for the first time here in Switzerland at a 3-MMM Migros last week. (The MMM Migros in Tivoli-Spreitenbach to be precise. Migros supermarkets, which dominate Swiss grocery and household shopping, come in three sizes: small single-M stores, bigger MM stores, and MMM megamarts.)

They even have the most useful sizes for bento sold together in a 3-pack: 2 360ml boxes, and a 480ml box with two removable dividers. This one alone is perfect for a tightly packed bento, and could be supplemented with one of the 360ml filled with fruit and so on. (That’s another great feature of Lock & Lock - each container is clearly marked on the bottom with its capacity in mililiters, ounces and quarts.)

They aren’t as cute as other bento boxes perhaps, but are very practical. Now that I can get my hands on Lock & Locks, I’m going to experiment a bit with fully frozen bentos and such things…stay tuned!

And by the way…

You may have noticed that the Bento Item Of The Week feature has been in hibernation for a while. I realized that featuring an item every week was sort of encouraging the notion that you needed lots of supplies to make bentos…which is certainly not the case! As a matter of fact, since I am in the process of packing and moving house right now I’m trying to declutter and streamline my own supply of bento boxes and other items. I have two big Ikea storage baskets full of boxes, cutters and other paraphenalia, and I consider that to be way too much. (And I’m in a big de-cluttering / simplifying my life mood at the moment!)

So, I’ve discontinued the Item Of The Week, but will feature equipment or supplies that are truly worth having periodically. Lock & Lock boxes certainly count as being really worth having, but I’m restraining myself from buying too many!

Bento no. 43: A low calorie, high fiber, tons of vegetables adjustment bento

maki — Fri, 11 Jul 2008 13:18:00 +0000

Bento contents:

Stir-fried noodles consisting of:

2 cups sliced mixed vegetables - sweet and chili peppers, cabbage, enoki (straw) mushrooms, snow peas, green onion, fresh ginger, celery, approx. 60 cal
Shirataki or konnyaku noodles, 5-10 cal
1/2 Tbs. sesame oil, 60 cal
4 vegan shuumai dumplings, 120 cal

Total calories (approx): 245 (how calories are calculated)

Time needed: 10 minutes in the morning (can also be made ahead)

Type: Spicy Asian, vegan

I call this an adjustment bento - one I use to balance out some not-so-healthy eating. Perhaps you’ve splurged at restaurant the night before, or polished off a whole carton of ice cream while watching a weepy movie. This bento is for days when you want to really want to watch your calories as well as eat a lot of vegetables. Call it dieting, detox, or what you will. It’s more interesting than a plain salad, and you won’t feel like you are depriving yourself.

The key to this bento is to use as big a variety as you can of colorful vegetables for the noodles. Try to go for at least one from the deep green family, one from the light green family, and one from the bright red, yellow and orange family, and aim for at least 2 cups worth or more. It’s a good chance to clear out your vegetable bin too.

The noodles are almost-zero-calorie shirataki or konnyaku noodles, which are described in depth here. They are basically all water and fiber, and help to make you feel full. You can use a whole packet if you like, which will make you feel very, very full, or half a pack. The straw or enoki mushrooms also add fiber and texture while contributing almost no calories.

For the protein part of the bento and for textural variety, I just microwaved some frozen shuumai dumplings. I used the vegan variety to keep this bento all-vegetable. If you use commercial frozen shuumai, calculate pork shuumai at around 60 calories per piece and shrimp shuumai at around 50 calories p.p.

Recipe: Stir-fried shirataki noodles with lots of vegetables

This is a variation on the Spicy Korean flavor noodles in Bento no. 3.

2 cups or more of various colorful vegetables, cut into julienne or thin slivers
1/2 to 1 packet shirataki noodles
1 piece fresh ginger, finely julienned
1 red chili pepper, finely julienned
3-4 green onions, cut up
1 packet enoki (straw) mushrooms
1/2 Tbs. sesame oil
Salt and pepper
1 Tbs. soy sauce
1 Tbs. ketchup

Boil up some water in an electric kettle (the fastest way to boil water - see Equipment.) Put the boiling water in a pan and add the drained shirataki noodles. Boil for 2 minutes and drain well. Optionally cut into shorter lengths. (Note: I’ve found a shirataki noodle brand that needs less boiling than the one I used previously to get rid of the slightly odd smell. You may need to boil yours a couple of minutes more or less.)

Heat up a wok or sauté pan. Add the sesame oil, ginger and half the green onions (the white and thicker parts). Add the vegetables and stir-fry. If the vegetables start sticking to the pan, add a tiny bit of water to loosen. Season with a little salt and pepper. With a very hot pan this should only take a few minutes.

Add the noodles to the vegetables. Add the soy sauce and ketchup, and toss well. Turn out onto a plate and let cool before packing into bento box.

I used a pretty deep bento box (more then 2 inches or 5 cm) for this. I felt very full after eating this bento, but very virtuous.

Timeline

If you can cut up the vegetables the night before, you can really cut down on the morning prep time. You can also make the noodle dish the night before.

How to make shuumai / shumai dumplings

maki — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 13:01:42 +0000

Shuumai or shumai dumplings （焼売）are a standby for dim sum, and are very well suited to bentos. They are small, freeze very well, and are a lot easier to make than gyoza dumplings.

You’ve probably encountered shuumai dumplings in the freezer section of Asian or Japanese grocery stores. Frozen ones are usually pretty good, but if you make them yourself you know exactly what you put in them. I just make a double or triple batch whenever I decide to make shuumai for dinner. (I sit myself down in front of the TV with my dumpling ingredients and go at it.) Just follow along with the photos and you’ll be turning out lots of shuumai yourself.

Step-by-step: Basic shuumai

You will need:

Shuumai skins. Shuumai skins are square, and are a bit smaller than wonton skins. This is a Japanese brand, but there are Chinese brands too. They are made simply of flour and water. (I guess you could make your own skins, but to me that crosses the line into Too Much Work.)

Filling of your choice. I made two type of shuumai here, shrimp and vegan tofu. The recipes for both fillings are at the end of this article. Whatever filling you use, it should sort of stick together when formed into a ball.

Place a skin on your hand. (The skins do tend to dry out and become brittle quickly, so keep the rest covered with a damp cloth or under an upside down bowl while you work.)

Put about 1/2 tablespoon of filling in the middle of the skin.

Make a circle with your thumb and forefinger.

Push the shuumai skin down into the circle formed by your finger and thumb.

Squeeze the dumpling gently from the sides, while pressing the top and bottom.

Here is a shuumai from the side.

A completed shuumai. It should be a little cylinder shape that is taller than it’s wide, since it will spread out a bit horizontally when you cook it.

Optionally decorate the top with a green pea or an edamame. Frozen is fine.

To cook, oil the bottom of a steamer and place the shuumai in there so that don’t touch. (If you squish them in too tightly they will get stuck to each other.) Steam for 10-15 minutes.

Alternatively, you can steam-panfry them in a non-stick frying pan. Add a little oil to the pan, put in the shuumai, add water to about half the height of the shuumai, and cook with a lid on for about 10 minutes. This steam-panfrying method is similar to the one used for gyoza dumplings.

Here are the two types of shuumai I made. The vegan ones are decorated with green peas to differentiate them from the undecorated shrimp shuumai.

Freeze the steamed shuumai after they have cooled down to room temperature. You can then just microwave them for a few minutes covered with plastic wrap, steam them, or steam-panfry them to use for bento. You can also deep fry them for crispy dumplings.

You can eat shuumai just as they are, or with a dipping sauce. My favorite is plain mustard (mustard powder reconstituted with water) with soy sauce. Soy sauce with vinegar is also good.

Recipe: Shrimp shuumai filling

This makes about 25 to 30 shuumai, depending on how much you pack into each skin.

225 g / 1/2lb uncooked shrimp (fresh or frozen), roughly chopped
1/2 medium onion, finely chopped
120 g / 4 oz ground pork
1 tsp. grated ginger
1 Tbs. soy sauce
1 Tbs. shaoxing wine or mirin
1/2 Tbs. sesame oil
Pinch of salt
Ground pepper
1 Tbs. cornstarch or potato starch

Combine the pork, ginger, seasonings and cornstarch, and mix well until it forms a paste. Add the onions and shrimp and mix very well. Use to fill shuumai skins.

(Shaoxing wine is type of Chinese rice wine. Mirin or sake can be substituted, or sherry.)

Recipe: Vegan tofu filling

This makes enough to fill 25-30 dumplings.

1/3 cup cooked whole grain (such as brown rice, barley, wheat berries)
120 g / 4 oz extra firm tofu, very well drained
4 large fresh shiitake mushrooms, finely chopped
1/2 onion, finely chopped
1 tsp. grated ginger
1 Tbs. miso
1 Tbs. soy sauce
1 Tbs. sesame oil
Ground pepper
Pinch of sugar
1-2 Tbs. cornstarch or potato starch

Lightly fry the cooked grains in half of the sesame oil until the grains are a bit toasty. Let cool.

Mash the tofu until it’s quite smooth. Add the rest of the ingredients and mix well. If it seems too wet, add a little more cornstarch or potato starch. Use to fill shuumai skins. Shuumai made with this filling will be softer than the shrimp shuumai. This mixture has quite a lot of flavor so you probably don’t need a dipping sauce.

Any filling that holds together when formed into little balls will work as a shuumai filling. Experiment!

Bento no. 42: Easygoing shrimp bento

maki — Tue, 01 Jul 2008 15:48:44 +0000

1 cup (1 cup=220ml) white rice, 240 cal
1 cherry tomato and vegetable gratinwith pesto, 110 cal
Easy chili shrimp (4 med. shrimp), 60 cal
Edamame, 10 cal
Yukari (furikake made from umeboshi and red shiso leaves)

Total calories (approx): 420 (how calories are calculated)

Time needed in the morning: 10-15 minutes

Type: Japanese

I’ve already described each component of this bento already, but I just wanted to show how it all comes together.

The time it takes to assemble a bento depends on how long it takes to cook and cool down the item that takes the longest. In this case it’s the cherry tomato and vegetable gratin, which takes a couple of minutes to assemble, 6 minutes to cook in a toaster oven, then at least 5 minutes to cool. So as you can see from the timeline below, I start with this first. Once the gratin is cooking, I pack the rice in the bento box (so it has time to cool down) and then cook the shrimp, which takes a shorter time to cook and cool. (Incidentally, the gratin’s calories can be reduced if you don’t use a big spoonful of pesto sauce as I did…though that certainly makes it taste great!)

“Cubing” the rice, as described here, is optional, but it does make the whole bento look a bit neater I think, and provides a guide for decorating the rice. I just did it simply here with a little yukari (red shiso furikake) and edamame (2 pods worth of beans), but it the comment it was suggested that the ‘cubes’ could be a base for Monokuro Boo…I don’t quite see black and white piggies, but if you do, go for it!

Incidentally, I’m once again using my favorite bento box of the moment, a stainless steel one-tier model from Kobo Aizawa (described here - it’s the “M” size, with a capacity of 670ml). I love how food placed in it cools down quickly, how durable it is, and how the lid clips on very tightly. I think I may try to get another stainless steel bento box. The only drawback is that after it’s washed, our hard water leaves streaks on it, but I just buff these off with a clean kitchen towel.

I also took the precaution of packing the bento bog with an icepack, as described here, in an insulated bag. The bento was a bit cold at lunchtime but tasted fresh and wonderful.

Summer bento safety

maki — Fri, 27 Jun 2008 13:47:20 +0000

I’ve noticed that several kyaraben/charaben (cute bento) oriented Japanese bento blogs are scaling back on the intricacy of their bentos recently. It gets very warm and humid in the summer throughout most of Japan, so food safety is a big issue. Complicated charaben require a lot of handling of the food, which should be avoided when the weather is warm.

I have already put together a comprehensive list of bento safety tips, but here are some top summer bento safety tips.

Heat through cooked food, and then cool it down before packing into a bento box. This is a fundamental rule of bento safety.
Use a cooling element whenever you can. This can be an ice pack like the one in the photo, or portions of your bento pre-frozen (examples here, here, here, and here. A small ice pack is a very handy thing to have: if you’re buying just one, choose a soft-gel in a bag model, which is lighter than the kind in rigid plastic containers. (I put my bento box and ice pack into an insulated six-pack cooler that I got as a promotional giveaway many years ago, padded with a towel that doubles as a handwipe.)
Don’t handle food too much. Ease up on the intricate bento decorations unless you are very fast and good, until it gets cooler.
Cook proteins through thoroughly. No raw fish or half-cooked meat, or moist tofu! Fried tofu or tofu cooked through thoroughly (e.g. scrambled tofu) is ok because much of the moisture has been cooked off, but plain blocks of tofu should be avoided. Remember that bacteria love moisture!
Keep your hands, utensils and bento boxes clean. Beware of cross contamination, such as touching raw food (e.g. vegetables) with a spatula you used to cook meat. And of course, wash your hands before handling any food!
Be careful of uncooked food as well as cooked. I think there is a tendency to be overly cautious of cooked food safety while forgetting that raw food, such as salads, can be just as prone to contamination. If you’re carrying salads and raw vegetables for lunch, I highly recommend using an ice pack.

Bento no. 41: Cold soba bento

maki — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 10:18:24 +0000

Bento contents:

1 1/2 US cups (approx. 6 oz / 170g) cooked cold soba noodles, 170 cal
1/2 cup dipping sauce (see soba noodles recipe), 15 cal
Shrimp fritters (with 6 shrimp), 200 cal
Cherry tomatoes, chopped green onion, 5 cal

Total calories (approx): 390 (how calories are calculated)

Type: Japanese, noodles

Cold soba noodles are best served right away, so they are not my first choice for a bento. But I seem to always end up making too much and have to deal with the leftovers.

The problem with bringing soba noodles for bento is that they really should be served cold, not at room temperature. You can use thermal bento sets like Mr. Bento to keep things cold, or ice packs. But the best way to deal with the coldness issue in my opinion is to freeze the dipping sauce. The frozen block of dipping sauce keeps the noodles cold, and will defrost enough by lunch time. Just put the sauce (a half cup is more than enough) in a freezerproof and leakproof container, and freeze overnight. If you are using bottled concentrated sauce (tsuyu or mentsuyu, such as this one), you can mix it with water before freezing or freeze it straight and add a little cold water at lunchtime to thin it out.

I’ve used my Fit & Fresh Breakfast Chiller for this, but I left out the cooler ring to put in a bit more noodles. The dipping sauce was frozen in the liquid container (that normally is for milk) - it keeps the noodles cold while it defrosts.

The top compartment contains the shrimp fritters and some condiments (green onions and nanami tougarashi (seven-flavor pepper) in a twist of plastic wrap.

To eat this you can dip the noodles into the container of sauce, or just dump the sauce over the noodles. You can dip the fritters into the noodle sauce too—they’ve very good that way. (Tempura, which the fritters are a simplified version of, are a common accompaniment to a soba meal.)

In any case, cold soba with a propery cold sauce is a nice change of pace for bento, especially in the summer.

Noodle tips

Store leftover soba noodles drained well and wrapped, in the coldest part of your fridge. Don’t keep them longer than a couple of days.
If you plan to use soba noodles or other cold noodles for bento, make sure to rinse them extra well to get rid of any starchiness (see the instructions for cooking soba noodles).
If you have a problem with precooked soba turning a bit mushy, the problem is either overcooking or the poor quality of the noodles themselves. I find that soba that contains some yamaimo or yams hold up a bit better. (You can also try using soba noodles which are meant to hold up for a longer time period, if you can get a hold of them. They are called enkai-you（宴会用）or “banquet” soba.)

Two quickies with shrimp: Easy chili shrimp; shrimp,onion and furikake fritters

maki — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 14:23:15 +0000

One of the handiest freezer stock foods is frozen peeled shrimp. They aren’t as tasty as unpeeled, unfrozen shrimp, but they sure are handy to use. I almost always have a bag or two around.

Here are two recipes with a little kick to them that can be made in just a few minutes from frozen; both are perfect for bento.

Recipe: Easy chili shrimp (ebichiri)

This is a real cheater’s version of shrimp with chili sauce. It’s cooked in about 5-6 minutes.

For one bento:

4-6 medium size peeled frozen shrimp
1 Tbs. sake (why sake? read this)
Sprinkle of salt
2 Tbs. ketchup
1/2 to 1 tsp. hot chili paste: toubanjang (doubanjang) is best, but anything else would work too, like harissa or Hungarian chili paste. Make it as hot as you like!

Put the frozen shrimp in one layer in a small frying pan. Sprinkle with salt and sake. Heat up the pan with a lid on, and let steam-cook for about 2 minutes. Turn over and cook another minute or so until cooked through. Add ketchup and chili paste, and mix. Let cool before packing into bento box. Optionally sprinkle with a little chopped green onion.

Recipe: Shrimp and green onion fritters with paprika

Frozen shrimp are combined with wacked up green onion, and pan-fried or deep fried. Here I’ve pan-fried them. The furikake adds flavor and a nice crunch. To ensure the fritters don’t turn greasy when cooled, be sure to drain off the oil very well.

For one bento (make 3-4 little fritters):

3-4 medium size peeled frozen shrimp
About 1/4 cup (a sprig or two) fat green onion, chopped up roughly
Sprinkle of salt
A pinch (about 1/8 tsp.) hot paprika (you can omit this if you prefer it not to be spicy)
1 Tbs. furikake of your choice, preferably a kind with nori in it (like noritama, storebought or homemade)
1 Tbs. flour
1 Tbs. cornstarch or potato starch
1 Tbs. or so of water

Roughly chop up the frozen shrimp into small pieces (you could also use tiny frozen shrimp here). Combine with the green onion, salt, paprika and furikake. Add the flour and cornstarch and add just a little water so that everything is coated.

Heat up some oil in a frying pan. Drop the fritter mixture into the hot oil with a tablespoon. Shallow fry or deep fry the fritters until crispy on both sides. Drain very well. Cool before putting into your bento box.

Make-ahead note: You can make these fritters in advance and refrigerate (up to a day) or freeze (up to a couple of weeks) them. Heat and crisp them up in a toaster oven before putting into your bento.