Today we present you a new kind of article that will make you discover what a bento is. You may also learn how to cook your own League of Legends bento, with the help of a Millenium recipe!
What is a bento?
A bento is a lunchbox, usually one person serving, home cooked or sold to takeaway in some japanese restaurants/shops. Out there in Japan, it is very common that children and adults bring their bento at school/work.
Traditional bento (lacquered box with compartments) with typical Japanese food
"Kyaraben" is a type of bento that represents videogames, manga, anime or comics characters... Well, whatever you want! Furthermore, another type of bento, "oekakiben", represents people, items or landscapes. Japanese usually use sticky rice for their preparation, making the process to shape what you want easier:
Left: an oekakiben; right: a kyaraben with Sailor Moon heroines
League of Legends bento recipe
For this recipe, we have imagined a scene: Heimerdinger is chasing Poros but Tahm Kench is trying to prevent him to do so! To represent this, we will be using several ingredients, to make it cute and tasty at the same time. Here is the bento you may obtain:
Before doing anything, make sure your work surface is clean and every ingredients and tools are within easy reach! If you do not have a bento, just use small boxes that you usually use to store food, e.g. Tupperware: be wily and resourceful!
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All of these are NOT mandatory: do with what you have! |
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The first floor is the bush where Poros are hiding!
In order to create a bush, you have to cook broccoli al dente - i.e. crunchy - if it is fresh. If you do not have any, use some beans, Brussels sprouts or peas. In short, we want green! Please wait patiently that the vegetables are cold before manipulating them.
You just have to arrange it in the bottom of the bento:
To make your bento denser - because you have a long day ahead!-, we add small sausages flowers. Here are the steps to follow:
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| Cut until the half of the sausage a 6 or 8 branches star | Marinate the sausages in a dressing of your choice (here: soy, sesam, soy, salt) during 10 mn. Then, stir-fry them in a pan a few minutes: it buds! |
Insert a corn kernel between the sausage petals |
To create Poros, you will have to take care of it ahead of time! Indeed, you may cook the quail eggs for 4 or 5 minutes in a pot of boiling water and then let it stand for a few hours in cold water. In fact, when it is hot, it is very hard to shell eggs properly, even more for small quail eggs! Take your time to take off the shell, we are not in a hurry!
So you need 3 quails eggs, but prepare 5 or 6 of them in case of fail.
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To represent Poros' eyes, use a hole punch (don't forget to properly clean it) into the Nori sheet. It is the algae sheet used to roll up makis: you may find them in the Asian food section at supermarkets for instance. Thus you will need 3 pairs of eyes! Once you are done with it, do not forget to store the algae sheets in a zipped bag; otherwise, it will become crumbly, easily breakable and useless (as confettis yet, it may be used as a saisoning). So that the eyes stick well onto the Poro's face, just use a little sauce on the back (ketchup, mustard, oil...). For the Poros' tongue, cut precisely some closed U in ham, then stick it onto the small creature. |
You will have to be focused for the horns! You are going to understand why you need a sharp non-serrated knife. Be careful to avoid First blood: we do not want to season the bento with blood!
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| Cut the hazelnuts in quarters |
The horns have to be thin. Otherwise it may be hard to insert them in the eggs, the Poros' bodies Dig a little bit the inner part of the hazelnut quarter so that the horn is realistic |
Now, you can create small cracks on the right and left sides of the eggs to put gently horns. Et voilà! Your mischievious small Poros are now ready to gambol in the bush:
The first floor of your bento is now ready! Heimerdinger will have to hurry because Tahm Kench is prowling around the Poros (it is a container where we have put a seasoning):
But what is Heimerdinger doing? He is desperately looking for Poros, but they all escaped in the second floor of your Bento!
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To create Heimerdinger, you will need yellow pastas to properly represent his mane. You can use either chinese or Udon noodles (not Soba noodles, they are made of buckwheat and will therefore not be white!), or even spaghettis. |
Don’t forget to wash you hands before cooking!
Heimerdinger’s face it easy to do: just take a round cheese coated with a strip of Nori sheet.
For the glasses, you will need cherry tomatoes:
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| Cut two slices of tomato and scoop them | Using a small round cookie cutter, cut rounds of hard cheese (here raclette cheese) and fill your tomato circles | Put the Nori sheet on a soft surface (towel or silicone baking sheet) and cut rounds to fill your tomato circles. |
To make it more realistic, take a small bullet of cheese and squeeze it to make a disc: this will be the glimmer in Heimerdinger’s eyes!
It is now time to start the moustache! To do so, you will need a serrated cutter. If you don’t have one, simply cut half-disks of cucumber and cheese.
For the nose, a small pink ham triangle should do it. You can now assemble Heimerdinger’s face:
To brighten up you almost-finished bento, you can fill the mold with sweets:
You will be able to use the leftovers (cheese, hazelnuts…) in a salad for example, nothing is wasted! To close the bento, press the food gently. If you want to put the bento in the microwave, don’t forget to take off the lid.
Here it is, the tasty and healthy Bento is ready! You can now store it in a Furoshiki (japanese wrapping technique)…
See you soon with a new episode: how to make a League of Legends Furoshiki! ( ＾▽＾ )／
