A recreation of the lunch Satsuki gets up early to make in My Neighbor Totoro: rice cooked over a kamado, grilled dried sardines, green peas, pink sakura denbu and a pickled plum. The film is said to be set in the mid-1950s, before television had spread through Japan. This time the rice came from the kamado, and the denbu was colored with beet powder.
Ingredients
- Kamado-cooked rice
- Small dried fish
- Green peas
- Pickled plum (umeboshi)
- White flaked filling
- Beet powder
How I made it
- Grill the small fish
- Sprinkle beet powder over the white flakes and toss in a pan to make pink denbu
- Pack the freshly cooked rice into the lunch box
- Top with the denbu, green peas and pickled plum, and finish with the grilled fish
Sources: news.allabout.co.jp anime.eiga.com
This moment in the journey
Satsuki's lunch box
My Neighbor Totoro, I was told, is set around 1953, in the days before television. I decided to make a lunch from that era: the one Satsuki gets up early to pack for her father and her little sister Mei.
I grilled two small fish. Sprinkling beet powder over white flakes and tossing them in a pan turned them into pink denbu. Beyond the shoji screens, the mountains caught the afternoon light.
I fluffed the freshly cooked rice and packed it into a red lacquered lunch box: pink denbu, green peas, a pickled plum. The plum turned out to be huge. Then the grilled fish went on top. You're pretty big too.
Watch this scene on YouTube1:45
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