Salt and Pepper Tuna Onigiri

These past few weeks have been quite hectic for me, with increased class loads. That, coupled with the onset of the hot weather here, has meant dinners are getting lighter around my place, and there aren't so many leftovers to remake for lunch the next day.

When my day gets busy, and I need something quick and reasonably healthy to eat, I often resort to that great Japanese convenience store stand-by - the tuna mayonnaise onigiri. But I get bored if I have to eat the same thing over and over, so I took a look around my kitchen to see how I could jazz them up.

I don't usually keep nori on hand, since Peter hates it so much, but it really provides a satisfying crunch and saltiness that I knew would be missing without it. My solution: gomashio - salted sesame seeds. I was following Maki's directions for making gomashio over on Just Bento when I realized that I didn't have quite enough black sesame seeds on hand to make as much as I liked, so I used a mix of white and black seeds. Then, staring at the mix in the pan, I thought - "Hey - this looks like salt and pepper!" So in the pan went some freshly ground black pepper.

The next morning, I mixed up some tuna salad, just as I would normally (with Kewpie mayonnaise, of course). Instead of putting it between a couple of slices of white bread, as I would have in Canada, however, I made onigiri. Rice balls can easily be made by hand, but since I was taking my first crack at putting something inside them, I wanted to use something for a mold.


First up, I took my two cups of warm rice, and added a generous sprinkling of gomashio - maybe a tablespoon or so. I mixed it so the seeds were nicely distributed, and then lined a small ramekin with plastic wrap. I dolloped in some rice, pressed it around, and then made an indentation in the centre. There, I added about 2 tsp. of tuna salad, and then topped the lot with more rice, pressing around the edges to get a good seal around the filling. I then lifted the lot out using the plastic wrap, and wrapped it up as if it were a regular sandwich. I made three filled onigiri for myself, and one plain for Peter out of the two cups of rice, and still had some tuna salad left over. This along with some cherry tomatoes and a miso soup bomb, made for a frugal lunch that I ate with one hand (the other hand, of course, busily cutting up flash cards, as ever.)

Bento Stand-by

Because I make bentos practically everyday, I've come to rely on a few stand-by recipes for when there aren't any leftovers to remake. Two of my favourites are ginger chicken and corn on rice, and miso stir-fried noodles.

I follow Elizabeth Andoh's recipe for Gingery Ground Chicken, from Washoku. The recipe calls for simmering ground chicken (or in the picture to the left; pork) with chopped fresh ginger, soy, sake, and mirin. It's then used to top rice, along with another colour component, like corn or dry-scrambled eggs. It's incredibly delicious and easy to make, but a bit hard to eat if you're not really proficient with chopsticks. In Washoku, Andoh writes that this dish is used to help Japanese schoolchildren increase their dexterity with chopsticks - learn or go hungry. Hmmm. Enough said, I think. In this box, I've also included mini pajeon, (Korean green onion pancakes), and broccolini gomae style. Gomae is a delicious dressing for vegetables made from ground sesame seeds - here I used black sesame seeds, because they're what I had on hand, but I think white sesame seeds are more traditional. The carrots are cut into sakura shapes because I didn't have time to cook them, and if you're going to have to eat raw carrots, isn't it better if they look like something interesting?

The second stand-by is something I came up with on the fly one day - Miso noodles. Since some people, who will remain unnamed, don't like rice every day in their lunch, I'm always trying to work non-rice dependent recipes into our lunch boxes. Here, I've taken some fresh udon noodles and stir-fried them with some vegetable strips, ginger, garlic, miso, and mirin. (I'm sure there's a real recipe for a more sophisticated version out there somewhere, but I usually wing-it when I'm in emergency lunch preparing mode.) Throw some salt salmon, steamed spinach, and takuan pickles on top, and you've got a great, reasonably healthy lunch quickly. It's also great as a one-dish meal if you add some chicken or pork strips.

They beat peanut butter and jam sandwiches, at least.