Furikake Mahimahi in Panda Bento

Furikake Mahimahi Bento, a photo by sherimiya ♥ on Flickr.

We try to eat fish at least once a week, but it seems I've been slacking off here, since (scrolling down) I don't see any fish in my photostream lately. When I saw this nice mahimahi at the market I thought it would be a nice change from the usual salmon (although I love salmon). I cut the fillet into smallish pieces, then pan-fried in butter (olive oil is good too). At the end, I sprinkled some furikake on all sides. I've also made this using kewpie mayo, smearing the fish with it and then sprinkling the furikake and frying. This works, but the furikake might burn if you fry too long. For TinySprite's bento, I tossed a few pieces atop hapa rice, stuck a few carrots on the sides and topped with fish-shaped Okinawan sweet potato. A couple of fish skewers completes the theme. The top tier holds berries, radish and cucumber. Just sprite-sized. ^_^

Furikake Bento

Furikake Bento, originally uploaded by sherimiya ♥.

It's a furikake mahimahi bento set because I was able to find fresh caught mahimahi yesterday. Yay! I'm pretty sure I've posted about this "recipe" before but if you missed it, here it is: slather your filet with kewpie mayo, sprinkle liberally with your favorite furikake (aji nori or nori komi is what we usually have), then pan fry both sides until done. I cut my filet into smaller pieces for ease of eating as well as increased surface area for coating with furikake. I actually served it with furikake rice; can you believe they didn't overdose on furikake? Both kids got basically the same bento, with steamed broccoli, carrots and "cherry" tomatoes, but he got golden plum while she got some kind of black plum. Neither is very sweet, although they were sold with Fall names. Oh well. At least we get to see something different than grapes every day.

Notice anything different about the lighting in my photos recently? I moved my picture studio to a different table which I just this weekend discovered to have nice natural Fall season light. So now the light angle is different and it feels fresh to me. I'm super excited about that. Silly, right? ^_^
This is posted at What's For Lunch -- won't you post yours too?

Hello Kitty Quail Egg Bento

Another Hello Kitty Quail Egg Bento, originally uploaded by sherimiya ♥.

I haven't posted a TinySprite bento for awhile so here's one from last week. It's a post-nap snack bento, with various fruit: pluot, kiwi and superripe saturn peach; a cup of edamame, carrot sticks and a little furikake mahimahi. I boiled a quail egg and tried to use a metal star cutter to form a star, but you can see it didn't really work. So instead I stuck some radish ears, rice stick whiskers, nori eyes and a yellow carrot nose (and the very useful red bow pick) and turned it into baby Hello Kitty. She was so excited about this bento; I was glad I had the presence of mind to take some pics of her eating it. The last time I did was almost 6 months ago. She looks so much older now, doesn't she? But still sitting in the baby booster seat, haha! She still prefers to eat with her hands, even though I always provide a utensil. So, things usually end up getting kind of.. messy. Ah, well. ^_^