Tuesday, September 2, 2008

Bento gone mad

My friend told me about Maruyu, which is a small Japanese grocery store that imports a lot of traditional Japanese things and is often frequented by Japanese people. I had to work on Sunday, which gave me a good excuse to dash across to Maruyu, about 10mins walk from my work to load up on some supplies. They also had a $2.50 store where I managed to pick up a few things as well. I told my friend about it, so we went back again today to buy MORE stuff. I almost bought a box of frozen Natto, but I didn't think my workmates will appreciate it.

If you think that's bad, I spent Saturday trawling through every single bargain store in Auburn to pick up other supplies as well. It was only today did I realise how much I've accumulated over 3 weeks??


And the scary thing? That's not all. I know I'm missing 2 of my egg moulds (The bunny and the fish), another pan and a few other gadgets. I also managed to pick up 2 collapsable sandwich boxes (top middle, the pink boxes), I'll have to try those out soon.

At Maruyu, I also managed to find these!


WTF is it? Sausage cutters. The green one is a penguin, yellow is a tulip and the pink is a crab. The red one is to make octopus sausages. You really need the proper japanese sausages that are firmer and skinner, but I grabbed some cocktail sausages to try out.


Peel skin and put in mould, press the cutter onto the sausage to get.....

Penguin!! hehehe The crab one didn't turn out at all using these soft cocktail sausages, which was a real disappointment. The crab one was the one I was most excited about. I'm sure I'll figure out a way to use it properly.

Which brings me to my animal bento! I used the penguin cutter and the octopus cutter for the sausages. I then quickly pan fried the sausages with a bit of the bulgolgi marinade.


The noodles was leftover rice noodles I quickly tossed together with sliced green beans, carrots and leftover korean banchan mushrooms. I cooked up a few mandu and quickly blanched the sugar snap peas and packed it with the last of the cherry tomatoes. My little animal sauce containers arrived from eBay, and I filled that up with honey mustard.

7 comments:

Cherryblush said...

OMG I love anything that's Korean. I really need to try out your Bentos! Call me when you need a taste tester LOL.

SoRMuiJAi said...

omg! we need to doa girls night out at a Korean restaurant! Its been age since I've been!

Cherryblush said...

Im in! Just let me know when and where. :D

Victoria A said...

:O how cute!! I want to buy some supplies too! Where exactly is this maruyu place?

SoRMuiJAi said...

Its 268 Clarence st I think. Basically its at the intersection of Clarence st and where the Town hall "Town hall" is. They didn't have much bento stuff though. Only really simple small ones (Like the white one in the photo). Most of the stuff I got off eBay or at various bargain stores. But they have a WHOLE heap of cosmetics and other stuff as well. Let me know when you want to go, I'll go with ya :D

Lorraine E said...

Aww I love your bento art! I saw all of those little tools in Tokyo and meant to buy some to take home with me but I forgot. The penguin and sausages are just too cute!

SoRMuiJAi said...

Thanks! Although I wouldn't really call it bento "art" just yet. It just looks better than my usual lunches! hehehe I really want to learn how to do the proper bento art with the eleborate decorations. But i'm worried the food will go off before I'm done! ;)