Oyakodon Bentos Recipe (Chicken and Egg Rice Bowl)

Hi everyone! How have you been lately? I'm so sorry for 'MIA-ing' (missing in action) quite some time but I missed all of you! Although I've not been posting for a month now (exactly one month from my last post), I still do visit and trying my very best to catch up on those blogs that I've been missing out but all are too fast for me or am I just too slow in reading!?  For those blogs that I didn't follow up or had missed quite a few posts, I'm really very sorry about that. I'll try my best to keep myself from other distractions and hopefully I'm able to finish reading all your posts, okay? Thank you very much for your understanding. 
So, what have I been doing during my absence? Well, in fact I'm not really as busy as you may think that I don't have the time to blog.*blushing* I'm just too lazy to blog, no motivations to blog, just don't feel like blogging outta sudden and I don't even know the reason behind 'til now. That's alright, just forget it because I'm back on the blog now! 
I don't only fancy cute stuffs and bento gadgets which are mostly from Japan, I'm also a SUPERB BIG fan of Japanese cuisine! I just love everything about Japan to the extreme, I feel! I wish to go Japan one day (it's so expensive), I wish to learn Japanese language (it's so difficult), I wish to learn cooking my favorite Japanese dishes, which is the easiest, the most possible among all my wishes and I'm still learning now! I even wished so much that I'm a Japanese girl when I was young! Silly huh!?  
I'm sure most of you are already very familiar who Nami of Just One Cookbook is. She shares the most authentic Japanese dishes with all her clear and detailed step-by-step photos, links and explanations in her blog. I was very happy when I stumbled upon her blog while hopping around few months back. Do visit her fantastic blog full of delicious food if you haven't do so! You'll be thrilled to bits just like me even if Japanese food is not your most favorite! 
These Oyakodon bentos were cooked on 5 July 2011. Yes... yup I know... I'm always SOO late in postings but late posts are better than none at all, right? EXCUSE! 
I used Nami's Oyakodon Recipe. Everything remain the same as Nami's recipe except the frozen chicken cutlets which I used instead of chicken thighs because the girls prefer fried chicken cutlets and instant dashi powder instead of dashi-jiru.

Messy's Oyakodon Bento

   Ingredients For 2 Servings :

• 2   chicken thighs, rinsed and patted dry (I used 2 frozen chicken cutlet, deep fried until golden brown and set aside)
• 2    eggs
• ½   onion, thinly sliced
• 3    Tbsp. Mirin
• 1     Tbsp. cooking sake
• 2    Tbsp. soy sauce
• 1     Tbsp. sugar
• 1     cup Dashi-Jiru (I used instant dashi powder)
• Chopped Mitsuba for garnish (or finely chopped green onions)

   How to cook :

1. Cut the chicken diagonally (Use Sogigiri cutting technique) 
2. Crack eggs into a bowl. DO NOT BEAT. Instead, hold chopsticks with the tip of chopsticks touching the bottom of the bowl, and write “Z” a couple of times. Set aside. 
3. In a shallow frying pan, heat Mirin and cooking sake and bring it to a boil. 
4. Add soy sauce, sugar, and Dashi-Jiru and bring it to a boil. 
5. Spread the onion into the pan, and then place chicken on top. Lower the heat and cook covered for a few minutes until the chicken is cooked through and onion is soft. 
6. Slowly add the eggs. Instead of pouring at once, evenly pour into the pan. 
7. Use chopsticks and poke around the ingredients so eggs will disperse evenly. Shake the pan so the ingredients move around and bottom doesn’t stick to the pan. 
8. Put Japanese rice into a large serving bowl. 
9. When the egg is cooked about 80%, add Mitsuba (or green onions) and turn off the heat after 1 minute. 
10. Pour the mixture on top of rice and pour extra sauce. Serve immediately.

Cheeky's Oyakodon Bento 

I cooked this after sending Messy to school. My hubby and I love it! 

I'd love to try using the chicken thighs the next time I cook this dish to compare the differences and I reckon Nami's original recipe will be tastier because the fried cutlets turned soggy after awhile. I tried Nami's few recipes too and will be posting on them in the near future as now I'm writing my posts according to the dates I cooked the dishes. 

I'm linking this post to Nami's Oyakodon Recipe so that you can refer to her clear and beautiful step-by-step photo instructions. Hope you enjoy it!  

French Toast + Mashed Potato Bentos

Oh... how I missed making Bentos for the girls but I'm gonna start soon again next week after the long school holidays for Messy！Yay！Yay！Yippie！Yippie！
So for the time being I'll share with you those Bentos that I'd made previously before I started my blog. 

French Toast Bento for Cheeky on 26th May
For this, I added milk to the eggs and it tasted SO MUCH more delicious ！Just like eating Egg/Custard Tarts

I used my new Leaf Picks for the quail eggs and new Food Cup that comes with a cute Lil Chick Pick to put the scrambled egg in that were left-over from dipping the breads in

Messy's French Toast topped with cheese+honey syrup Bento with Mashed Potato with salad cream+Bacon Bits on 21st Feb
As for this, I didn't add milk to the eggs and it was not as tasty

Cheeky's French Toast Bento on 21st Feb
As she don't like the taste of salad cream coz it's sour, so I drizzled a little honey syrup on her mashed.

Cheeky's Hello Kitty Plain Mashed Potato Bento on 28th Feb
Actually I wanted to make 2 Hello Kitty mashed but it was so difficult to mold it out so the other one I just made into a ball

 Mom's Mashed Potato+Bacon Bits Bento lunch on 28th Feb
I "scraped" them using fork and it turned out looking like 'fireworks' to me 

Both my girls and Mom LOVE mashed potato a lot and I used to buy for them from KFC frequently but not now anymore because Messy is growing sideways too much！
I'm still searching and googling on how to make the sauce for mashed potato similar to or like those served in KFCs with no luck.  Do any of you knows any recipe for the sauce? I'll be greatly appreciated if you do and share with me！

Rolled Roti Prata with Egg Bento

I made this bento for Messy on 10th May, Tuesday morning. She requested for roti prata (frozen) with egg. I think she must be craving for that because she hasn't had it for MONTHS！She used to eat roti prata ALMOST EVERYDAY for breakfast or even suppers sometimes！No wonder she's growing wider and wider, we always tease her ( SO BAD！) 

Messy's Rolled Roti Prata with Egg Bento + Side of 'Seafood' Sausages.    

I learned to do the Crap from Pikko of Adventures in BentoMaking. As I don't have any plain Kamaboko (can't find it here in SG), I just used sausages to try out my luck if I'm able to make the Crap since Messy wanted to have some of it in her bento. Haha lucky I succeeded！ 

First, I cut the sausages into 3 parts, then cut half lengthwise for each part. Next, I cut a 'V' at the end for the tail and lastly, I boiled the sausages. Hope you have fun making the crap too！Here's Pikko's Crap Tutorial link. 

This Roti Prata with Egg, Iceberg Lettuce, Ham and Crabsticks topped with Mayo was Messy's breakfast on 28th Feb.

This was Cheeky's...

and this was my Hubby's. Deliberately did a funny face for him with the mayo to make his day when he woke up. Hee... 

Fried Rice Bento

As I had mentioned in my Fried Egg Noodle Bento post that Cheeky don't like the taste of the sweet noodle, I cooked the fried rice for her. She'll prefer rice to noodle most of the time so the night before I already planned to cook 2 different dishes for her to choose.  

Fried Rice with egg, diced pork luncheon meat, small dried silver fish & topped with 3 Happy Quail Eggs.

*This is my previous bento that I made on 15th Feb 2011, before I started this blog.

Edamame Rice Bentos

I burned the mid-night oil again on Monday night, 28th March as I had mentioned before in my previous post. So whenever I need to stay up, I'll start 'stalking' my favourite bento blogs and search for ideas, designs to make in the morning. Actually I already had in mind that I'm gonna use one of the packets of colored vegetable seasonings (Dekofuri 3 colors) for sushi rice and make onigiri bento but had no idea what I'm going to make. After 'stalking' for awhile, I came across "How to Make Edamame Rice" on Bentolicious blog and changed my mind. Natural food colorings are alot better than artificial ones.  

Messy's Edamame rice Bento. She requested some apple wedges because it is part of their school rules for every students to bring fruits and only plain water on every last week of the month for their Green Day to promote healthy eating habits due to a high raise of obesity in young children nowadays. The green colored rice is the leaves of the Sweetcorn and the scrambled eggs (Tamagoyaki recipe) on top of the plain rice are the corn kernels.

Cheeky's Edamame Rice Bento. I molded these two bear Onigiris with cling wrapper. I stuffed some scrambled eggs inside the bigger bear so that it won't taste so plain and used spaghetti to stick two quail eggs for the ears.

Both of them LOVE the taste of the Edamame Rice！Messy finished up everything except the cherry tomato. She don't like because they are not sweet (I can't seems to find those sweet & juicy ones anymore) and knows that I only use to decorate... Hee...
Cheeky ate the remaining 1/3 small bowl of the Edamame Rice for her breakfast in the morning but came back home with her bento ALMOST untouched (apple and quail eggs gone) because one of her classmate celebrated her Birthday in school today and they have got cake to eat that she said she 'forgotten' about her bento. Anyway she did finished the green bear in the car after we had dinner out with my parents. Too bad the other big bear had turned bad due to prolong hours in the lunchbox.

Sunflower Egg Raisin Bun Bento

This was made on 24th Mar, Thursday when Messy had Math Remedial in school. Her Math is very weak since the first year she attended former school. I had tried teaching her on my own but in vain because no matter how much I tried explaining to her, she don't seems to understand and nowadays' Math is so complicated！Both of us were so much under stress during that period of time. In the end, I gave up and decided to get her a tutor which is the only best way out for both of us and YES！She really did showed so much improvements in her Final Year End Exams and all her results improved by 50%！Great！What a relief for the 2 of us.
But as her level goes higher, the difficulties go higher too. She doesn't has a very good foundation in Math (she hate this subject the most), LAZY to solve the sums, so ended up with Math Remedial every year.

I decided to make this Sunflower Egg Raisin Bun Bento because I just bought the raisin buns and Messy wanted bread for that day as she already had rice the other day, so I went online to search under my few favourite blogs for some ideas and saw this interesting, fun looking sunflower from Cute Food For Kids? I did a few pots of mushroom from chiwaku, 2 small chicken sausages of flowers and covered those empty spaces with frozen mixed veg.

Actually this was my 2nd Sunflower Egg cooked on that morning. The 1st one failed as some of the "petals" couldn't stick and fell off. Maybe I didn't put in the cheese sausages earlier before the egg white starts to cook.

Sunflower Egg Raisin Bun Bento