What to read after BENTOBOX.page | 70 Japanese Recipes, Plus Stories | Easy, Healthy, Sustainable!?

70 delicious and easy authentic bento recipes with photos and video links

What does bento mean to you?

For anyone looking for simple, healthy, tasty eating with a homemade flair, Chikako Tada’s “BENTOBOX.page – 70 Recipes, Plus Stories'' is ideal. It shows how to build beautiful, nourishing lunch boxes for kids and grownups alike.

Filled with recipes featured on Tada’s “Japanese Cooking by Pen & Spoon” YouTube channel (and including video links), the book is chock full of tips and tricks. Tada gleaned many from her mom in Okayama, Japan, on how to put together real Japanese bento boxes — like the gorgeous Tricolor Rice Delight Bento.

After traveling the world and living in India for seven years, Tada mastered the art of packing yummy lunches for her young son using locally sourced ingredients. That experience ultimately resulted in this uniquely adapted recipe book that shows step by step how to make traditional Japanese favorites, as well as options for your own menus, wherever you happen to be. No worries if you don’t recognize the unusual ingredients —Tada offers alternatives that work just as well.

The book features 70 recipes to fill your bento box in imaginative ways. Follow the 31 sample bento menus (such as Favorite Bento Classics like Karaage Fried Chicken Bento), or create your own combos. With 380 color pictures and a recipe index, this cookbook outshines all those other bento books with its ease of use.

And bento stories add to the excitement! Kagawa-based contributor Haruko Hosokawa guides us on umami in describing traditional soy sauce masters and fermented nukazuke pickles. Miho Tachikawa, in Hokkaido, offers homestyle recipes from Japan’s northern island where scallops and salmon are local delicacies. And Yasuko Malhotra, who is based in India, brings an international flair with curry and other unusual options in her bentos.

All in all, this is a wonderful resource for both experienced cooks and newbie bento fans. Every recipe is explained step by step, with pictures to make assembly simple.