Spongebob bento

My wife wanted to eat ‘nasi uduk’ (coconut milk rice) for today along with its usual side dishes like fried chicken, omelette egg, chicken floss, along with vegetables like cucumber, tomato, and lettuce. Since there were lots of food I think it’s best to utilize some of them (or all) for my bento today.

So after looking for several bento ideas, I’ve decided to make a Spongebob kyaraben which I think it’s perfect to utilize our today menu.

The coconut milk rice is basically the white rice made with coconut milk instead of water, plus several ingredients like daun salam (Indonesian bay leaf or Euginia polyanthum Wight), sereh (lemongrass or Cymbopogon citratus) , and lengkuas (Alpinia galanga). In Malaysia or Singapore they used to call it ‘nasi lemak’ which is the same thing with Indonesian ‘nasi uduk’. Compare with regular white rice, coconut milk rice has this very nice savory flavor and smell which add your appetite, but since made with lots of coconut milk the rice is very filling so we should eat it less than our regular portion.

Back to the bento, I made an egg sheet to cover the coconut milk rice and made the square shape. There are lots of facial details to be fill. The eyes were made with quail egg and nori, I cut the nori with scissors. The other circles were made from quail egg, cheese, and ham cut with 2 different size of straw. The mouth parts were made with carrot, quail egg, and ham; all cut with knife. It looked really simple but it took more time to make the Spongebob than my regular bento.

For side dishes, I took fried chicken, chicken floss, and cucumber from our dinner menu and I add a cherry tomato and mandarin orange to fill up the space along with the usual broccoli chunks.