Totoro & Rilakkuma Natto

I've received two emails to enquire about my steamed buns recipe a few days ago. However, I think I accidentally deleted the mails as I could not find them anymore when I wanted to reply. So sorry, if  you have emailed me about the steamed buns, but have yet to hear from me, please email me again.

Back to today's post. Have you tried natto and mentaiko before? For today's post, I'm sharing two food art made using natto and mentaiko, made them for myself last year. I chose to craft two of my favourite characters, Totoro and Rilakkuma. :)


I think Natto is an acquired taste due it's smell, taste and texture. I did not like it when I first tried, but these two years or so, I've come to love it, so much that I eat it almost everyday for lunch on weekdays. And do you know it has lots of benefits? You can google for more if you are interested. In short, it helps to give us beautiful skin, a healthy heart and strong bones.


The side dishes for dinner that day were Tori Kurozu-An and chawanmushi. I first tried Tori Kurozu-An at Ootoya and I loved it. This is the first time I'm cooking it at home, got the recipe from Just One Cookbook. I love the Japanese black vinegar used in this dish.


Totoro was made using natto, rice, olives and nori. I keep forgetting to add on whiskers for quite a few of my Totoro food art lately. :(


This is the other design I made using natto. This is another of my favourite character, Rilakkuma.


The side dishes were chicken katsu and broccoli stir-fried with carrots. I sprinkled lots of chilli powder on mine. -_-


A closer look at Rilakkuma, he's made from natto, rice and olives. If you like mentaiko and natto, try this combination of mentaiko, natto and spring onion with rice, tastes quite good. My boys do not like mentaiko over their rice, they only like it mixed with mayonnaise over their pasta. However, they like the other roes like ebiko and tobiko over their rice, just not mentaiko.

Where to get same or similar items used in today's post: