Fish steak with pineapple salad bento
While trying to cook new recipes for my bento since I started two months ago, I’ve never done a bento using the menu from our usual cook book. It’s true that most of our usual dishes are not bento materials, but of course some of them can be made into nice looking bento. And that’s what I had in mind since this morning.
I have this, let’s say my specialty menu that my whole family like. It’s not that I often cook for them, in contrary, I’ve only cooked for them (my whole family) maybe 2-3 times since they’re living in different city so when we visit them we usually eat at restaurants. But I’ve cooked this menu for me and my wife more than 20 times, maybe once each month, that I’ve become very comfortable making it, it’s one of several dishes that I don’t need to read the recipe anymore. I’ve got the recipe from my steak book but I’ve tweaked the recipe several times.
The menu is consists of fish steak (I used John Dory fillet because it’s my wife favorite, but we can use red snapper or salmon fillet) served with spaghetti and pineapple salad. I usually add grilled shrimps with chopped garlic and celery to add more flavor. It’s very simple and quick to prepare (about 30 minutes until ready to serve), the longest time spent is dicing the pineapples and tomatoes for the salad.
I need to add several things for this menu become more presentable in bento way. I used my two tier bento box, one for the fruit salad and the other for the rest. I added strawberry to the salad box to strengthen the color ’cause I think that the colors from pineapples and tomatoes were too pale.
On the other box, I was planning to make a squid from the John Dory fillet, but I didn’t manage to do it. I think it’s almost impossible to make a good squid cut before or after the fish is grilled (I’ve tried both ways). So I made the squid from a slice of cheese, cut it with my art knife. The black eye was made with nori, cut with scissors, and the eyes were from cheese cut with two different size of straw.
The end result was not bad, I’m quite pleased since I can make a bento from one of my usual recipe and I hope that I can do something like this again in the future.
Wow, your recipe sounds really good! And I like your squid! Yummy!^^
Thank you Lil’chan. The squid was from Mario games, I cut the cheese with knife based on my memory so the result was not exactly like the original design.
very eye catching and yummy bento..
Hello mushima, thank you for visiting my site ^_^
The squid is really adorable … love the pineapple salad. Makes me want to have some ‘rujak’
)
Hello Lia, I love rujak also, but now I only eat it when visiting my parents house, buy it near their house.
nice bento, the squid was a nice touch.
Thank you javapot ^_^
Hi. I love your bento pics! They;re so cute! I feel inspired to make my own… someday, haha. Do you bring them to work, or do you just eat them at home? How long, on average, does it take you to assemble one? Also, any recommendations on bento books? =)
Hello there Ihsan, thanks for visiting ^_^
The first try is usually the hardest, try making a simple bento first, maybe just put some food into a bento box and arrange them, you don’t have to make decorations or characters and see whether you like the whole process or not.
As for my bento, sometimes my wife bring them to her office, but most of the time we eat them for lunch or dinner at home.
The average time for arranging a bento (putting the dishes into bento box and making some decorations) is 30 minutes, not counting the time needed to prepare the whole dishes from scratch. It’s best to make some sketches before we put the food into the bento box.
Most bento books are in Japanese, you can search English bento books at amazon, but there are lots of great bento sources you can find on internet.