Safer Sushi

The original bento boxes contain a whole load of sushi rice. 

I, however, am slightly dubious of packing rice in my lunchbox. Something about food safety. I know that I whole load of people do it, and do it perfectly well, however, I'm just not that confident. 

Enter Safer Sushi, the no-rice alternative to sushi. I would direct you to the web page where I found out how to do this, however I have seen this on several web pages and can't remember the exact one where I found it first. So... Just to let you know that this is not my idea, and whoever worked it out, they are a genius. I really wish I knew you. 

The premise is that you make a sushi-like thing, but with a slice of bread and not rice. So it's kind of like a tortilla pinwheel sandwich, but more like sushi in the starches-to-filling ratio. Kind of like a great compromise between the two. 

Also, it's a lot quicker to make than real sushi. And you need less stuff. And what you do need, you are more likely to have on hand. 

Not that I don't love real sushi (it's weird, but I'm learning to love it) but I don't find that, for me personally, it's great lunch box material. Safer sushi? Yup, that's cool. 

To make Safer Sushi, lay one (or several) pieces of bread flat on your work surface (white looks more like rice, but use whatever you have), cut of the crusts and then flatten them a bit with a rolling pin (you don't want them so fin that they will break, just fin enough that they roll up a bit better.) 

Next, spread whatever you want to spread all over the piece(s) of bread-right up to the edges. Basically, if you spread it, you're golden. Nut/seed butter, vegan pate, jam, hummus, dip. Again, if it spreads, you're golden. One thing to remember though is that the color will show, and so you may want to choose something which has a brighter, bolder color that contrasts with the bread. 

Then, add the fillings. If they are tiny fillings (like sesame seeds) scatter them everywhere. If they are chunkier fillings (like carrot sticks) just put them at one end. Make sure you scatter evenly and put them right up to the ends of the bread. (Don't overfill, otherwise you won't be able to roll!)

Roll. It you included a chunkier filling, start there and roll that into the centre. Roll as tightly as possible. 

Place the rolled edge down towards the chopping board and cut into bite sized pieces. They shouldn't be too thick so that they don't fit into the box with the cut edge facing up. Because you want to see the spiral, you don't want to see just a boring bit of bread.

You can't see the swirl very well with mine. The mushroom pate that I used was pretty much the same color as the bread. Which was a bit of a fail. I do think that white bread works better here, but we had brown bread in, so... 

So I had brown bread, mushroom pate, sesame seeds and nori safer sushi; carrot coins and apple slices. Not very exciting apart from the 'sushi' but there you go. 

2. LEFTOVERS Great (she says sarcastically) I loose a star here, cause I haven't worked out what to do with crusts that I cut off yet. So great, just great. 

4. BALANCE This is another bento where, although it doesn't look particularly balanced, it is. The mushroom pate has protein, and the sesame seeds have calcium. They are not necessarily the best sources, but they will do all the same. So that's no stars (-1 + 1 = 0).

5. BOXABILITY I am quite proud of how everything fitted in my box today, I quite like that diagonal sandwich wall, so I'll award myself a star here. 

6. PACKAGING No excess packaging in my bento today, and so we'll go up to two stars! (Yippee)

Which ends us on two stars. Which is not bad I guess.