I decided to tackle spherification for the theme, and use it as an excuse to do the one part of this Food Wars bento box that I've never attempted. As is tradition when I start something with the intent of limiting the difficulty, I made this way too complicated. I was originally just going to do the nori pearls over rice, but then I decided that it'd be a shame to not also get the tsukudani layer in there, and then decided that, if I'm going that far, I might as well also make the kuzu sauce. And then I realized that I still had a bunch of burdock root and even carrots in my fridge, so it'd be a shame to not also make some kinpira. And if I was going to do all of that, I might as well just put together some other things to make a proper looking bento. As a result, I was in the kitchen for several hours again.

The spherification process went relatively smoothly, and I felt sufficiently like a mad scientist with my bevy of strange powders and eyedropper, but right after I very carefully measured out my sodium alginate to a 10th of a gram in order to get exactly .05% of my solution weight, I proceeded to knock over my container of nori juice while struggling to plug in my immersion blender. I just rolled with it, because I wasn't going to remake that, so as a result, my pearls were totally solid boba instead of popping. As a side note, while looking through my previous posts, I realized I did the exact same thing with the exact same container while trying to immersion blend some mayo in Week 4. Maybe I should learn my lesson when it comes to plugging in/unplugging my immersion blender while it's still in the container.

The solid pearls actually worked out better for the plating process, but I'll probably give that another shot later to see if I can get the correct effect. I also want to mess around with the strength of my nori juice; I seasoned it perfectly for drinking as a soup, but once spherified they basically tasted like nothing, which is interesting. I still have a decent amount of solution left, so I'm going to be experimenting with the seasoning for a few days. If/when I decide to do this again, I'm going to grab one of those big food service syringes because trying to eyedropper this was incredibly tedious. I think I can also try to get a more intense color than just "kind of tan".

In terms of overall taste, the tsukudani layer and kuzu sauce are actually an insanely good flavor combination for an otherwise very plain concept. The kinpira is fried with mayo, which gives it a richer taste than traditionally expected, but it works really well with the gingery bite of the kuzu sauce. It's genuinely an amazingly balanced bento, but as with all Food Wars recipes I've done, ain't no way someone is putting the whole thing together to competition standard in 2 hours. In lieu of making bacon onion miso soup, frying beer battered fish and making fishcakes for the rest of the bento, I have a few pieces of air fryer chicken chunks, some mushy peas that I made yesterday, a handful of potato chips and a taro cake. I struggled to plate the layers in my tiny tiny bento box, but I enjoyed my dinner, even if I wouldn't have been able to actually take this on a picnic if I wanted to.

Recipes referenced: ChefPK(https://youtu.be/ydYXC9fCnsc?is=5FmxLqTQub1oY7Td)

Dish Come True (https://youtu.be/91OEbDI96JI?is=Vu78qcrmF40aTIm2) 

Instructables (https://www.instructables.com/Spherification-Direct-Method/)

Week 30: Science Fair - Evolved Nori Bento ft. Spherified Nori