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(gentle music)
(speaks in Japanese)
Hello there.
Welcome back to another episode of Anime with Alvin.
Today we're gonna be making Sanji's Bento Box.
Originally, Sanji intended this box to be
for a girl he liked and when you're cooking for a crush
usually you kind of go a little bit overboard.
Even though this ended up in Louie's hands,
there's still quite a lot of fun foods in here.
So, let's get started.
First we're gonna get started with Japanese style curry.
A pretty comforting dish that I made
on the show a couple times.
Before chopping up one whole clove of garlic,
cutting up one small onion into chunks
followed by killing one large carrot
and then applying a roll cut method to ensure a very jewel
like consistency on these carrot chunks.
That follows up with one potato,
which I am now going to peel
and then chop into similarly sized cubes.
Russell going to cut up a pound of beef into one inch cubes.
This could be pretty much any cut as long
as it looks good in the store.
For extra flavor, aromatics and texture,
we're gonna take one red apple, peel the skin off
and then just grate that into shreds.
The sweetness of an apple goes really well when it breaks
down inside curry.
Onto the stove.
In a pretty decently sized pot or sauce pan,
we're gonna sear the beef
until just the outsides are sling brown.
Then the vegetables get dumped in.
After that gets to hang out for a little bit
and gets a little bit of color on the outside,
we're gonna dump
in two cups of beef broth and one cup of water.
Bring that to a simmer and then add in the grated apple.
This stews for about five minutes.
At which point we're gonna add two curry blocks
from the pre-bought package and they usually come
in a four piece packet, but we're only gonna use two
of them today.
'Cause this batch is not super big.
This gets stirred, gets simmered
and starts to cook off to the side.
We're waiting for the apple to break down.
'Cause that's when we know this will be done.
Probably 20 to 25 minutes on medium low heat.
Next up what seems to be a spicy lemon cold pasta dish
on the side.
Pretty simple.
Gonna cook quarter of a pound of spaghetti
according to package instructions just until Al Dante
which is usually two minutes less than what they say.
After the pasta gets removed from the pan,
the heat is going to help us melt one tablespoon
of butter inside, actually two.
'Cause butter is good.
A teaspoon of red chili flakes,
a hefty pinch of kosher salt, then a zest and juice
of one lemon and a tablespoon of finely chopped parsley.
Give that a toss until it's nice, spicy, lemony and buttery.
And that's good for now.
The next item I'm gonna be making seems to be a ham
according to what looks like ham in the show,
but to add some flavor and oomph,
we're gonna glaze this in honey.
'Cause honey glazed ham is delicious
and no one can really argue that.
Except if you don't like honey and if you don't like ham,
then I don't really like you.
For whatever reason,
animations or cartoons, really love the whole meat
on the bone situation by taking a chicken
dumps stick bone that we have cleaned the meat off of
and putting that inside the ham, which is pork.
This goes into a hot oven around 450 degrees
just until the honey is started to caramelize.
The bento box also seems to feature a fish.
So, we're gonna get started on making a simple grilled fish
or roasted fish based on the silver sheen.
I'm gonna guess it's maybe something like mackerel.
So, we have a whole mackerel quite on the larger side.
We're gonna rub the skin and surface
with oil and season the outside
and inside with just a heavy pinch of salt.
This also gets roasted in the same oven at 450 degrees
for about 10 minutes just until the fish is cooked through.
Once the skin is nice, crispy and crackling,
this gets exited and the flesh of this gets removed
in nice big serving chunk so that way whoever eats it
does not have to deal with the bone.
The next item in this bento box is a nice looking burger
that begins by toasting buns
in a little bit of butter of course,
until the buns are nice and toasted
and crispy on each side and goes a pretty hefty beef patty.
This is a nice little single patty burger,
not a smash burger.
We're gonna sear this until it's brown, nothing crazy here.
Add some salt on the top with a little bit
of pepper and continue cooking it until it gets a nice sear.
That's pretty nice.
On goes a slice of American cheese,
my preferred cheese for burger as it melts really easily
and also seasons the other side.
Put lid on top to barely melt it off.
It exits and we're just gonna assemble our burger
with lettuce on the bottom.
A nice healthy slice of tomato.
I actually don't like tomato.
Put the patty right on top and with some ketchup.
Three aesthetic pickles and the top bun I present to you.
Burger. Cool.
This next item is probably the one I'm the most excited with
because it's a personal recipe.
In the show, it looks like tamago sando
or Japanese style egg salad sandwiches.
So, I'm just gonna start by boiling some eggs.
About eight of them, not till soft boil, not till hard,
but somewhere in the middle around seven and a half minutes.
These get shocked and an ice bath peeled
until you have just really, really nice eggs.
Then I'm just gonna take a spatula
and mash these eggs up roughly.
The goal here is to kind of have the yolk mix in,
but not super, super, super, super fine.
And here is the star of the show, QP Mayo.
I'm adding in a half a cup
just so that this can combine with the eggs.
And what I love about QP is that it's a little bit lighter,
a little bit sweeter and seems to match the profile
of an egg a lot better in my opinion.
Always have to give it a taste.
That's pretty good.
It goes a couple cracks of black pepper
and our egg salad mixture is done for now.
The next part involves using milk bread.
I found this milk bread at a local bakery.
I really like milk bread for the sandwiches
because the sweeter and fluffier side
of milk bread pairs really well with the eggs.
Gonna give a generous dollop of the egg salad
mixture on two slices of milk bread
and one of the sandwiches seems
to have lettuce and tomatoes.
So, we'll just have that in
even though it's a little bit weird.
But the other one just gets a lot of egg salad
more than the one with the vegetables
because that is only fair.
These two sandwiches just go on a tray to chill
in the fridge just to set a little bit before we slice.
Now to build this bento box.
Okay, this ham is a little bit big for the box we bought
so I'm just gonna cut off a hefty slice and just shove it
into the corner until the bone is facing up.
Yeah, it's got a Tetris, this sky a little bit.
Holding that knife like that is quite dangerous.
Don't do that at home when you're shoving ham into your box.
Okay, we have a little bit
of shiso leaf in the middle to add some green touches.
And for the other slices of a ham,
we're gonna use a kindergarten technique
of cutting an incision in the middle
so that the ham can straddle the edge of the bento box.
Call me Bob the builder 'cause I fixed it.
To cut the crust off of the egg sandwiches cleanly,
I like to use a nice rated knife
on a chilled sandwich and use as few cuts as possible
even though I've clearly made a little bit of the mess.
I found that using a long knife and not adding a lot
of pressure helps you cut through the sandwiches better.
The sandwich with the lettuce
and tomato also has a thin sprinkling
of chives decorating its cross section.
Now we're gonna shove the nice burger in next
to the sandwiches, kind of squishing the side a little lot,
but can't really do much about that.
So, here you go.
We're gonna plate up the fish.
Two big chunks on the left
and in the middle goes the spaghetti, which has been coated
with butter, lemon, and spices, topped with basil leaf
and a little sprig of balo right on top, just like the show.
And in our final box,
a diagonal crisscross of curry and rice.
This is white rice that we have cooked off camera
and a helping of our curry, which has been simmering
for 30 minutes and nice and delicious.
And there you have it.
Our version of Sanji's Bento Box for pudding.
I mean Louie featuring the favorite foods
of the straw hat crew.
There it is in all its glory,
featuring grilled meat for Louie sandwiches for Robin,
a burger for Frankie, curry and rice for Zorro.
Pasta for Sanji himself.
And finally, fish with lemon for Uso.
Pretty cool if I will say, but how does it taste?
Yep. Rice and curry.
Pretty good.
How does the pasta taste?
Yep. This pasta's pretty good.
Can't really say too much about it.
Give a little lemon squeeze on the fish.
How's that one?
Oh, that one's actually really good.
Simple, delicious lemon fish.
How about the honey glaze ham.
Probably tastes better when you eat it on the bone too.
Yep. Honey glaze ham.
That's enough said.
All right, since I have now had my fill of this box
and it's time to invite my friends to do the same
because sharing food that other people love is always better
with other people.
There's Rachel, that's a big bite.
There's Steve.
He seems to be enjoying the food a little too much.
By the time we're done with this,
this bento box is gonna be empty.
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(gentle music)