Ever since we moved to San Diego, we’ve been buying most of our food from the farmers’ market right by our place every Saturday. It’s kind of fun and also good since we never took advantage of the farmers’ market when we lived in Brooklyn.
The other day at the farmers’ market I saw a lot of beets, and I realized that I’ve actually never cooked beets before. I was kind of surprised that it took this long to try cooking this super colorful food.
Its beautiful red/purple color reminded me of the background of Beat Sneak Bandit, the iOS game we’ve been playing since we got an iPad in March. So I decided to make food based on Beat Sneak Bandit using beets. Or should I call it Beet Sneak Bandit? Get it? haha. Oh it’s so silly…
This looks like job for…
Beat Sneak Bandit!
And Herbie!
Non-bento #46: Beat Sneak Bandit beet soup
Created and eaten on: 5/20/2012
Beat Sneak Bandit is a stylish and colorful puzzle rhythm game by Simogo. Simogo is run by two awesome guys, Simon Flesser and Magnus ‘Gordon’ Gardebäck. They also worked on one of our other favorite games, ilomilo!
In the game, you’re a sneaky Bandit and you move with the rhythm to steal back the clocks stolen by Duke Clockface without being detected.
The game is very colorful, perhaps a bit too colorful for a bento. Not to mention that my bento skills have gotten rusty. Besides, this was my first time cooking beets, so I wanted to try something easy like beet soup. Then while I was looking at game images for inspiration, I noticed that the background of the app icon for the Beat Sneak Bandit was very much like the color of beets.
Conveniently, I had two square bowls. At the time we were using them for our cactuses instead of for food. I took the bowls out, washed them well and voila, I had iOS app icon shaped bowls!
Thank you IKEA! (for the bowls and the plants)
I washed the beets, drizzled them with olive oil, wrapped them with tin foil, and roasted them. When the beets became soft, I took them out of the oven and let them cool down. Once they were cool to the touch, I peeled the skin, chopped them up, mixed with seasoning & veggie stock, pureed and was done! I put the soup in the fridge and started working on the actual characters.
The characters for the soup were, the Bandit, Herbie (the sneaky frog) and the Clock.
After I drew a sketch, I decided based on color which parts would be made with which food.
Orangish yellow (Bandit’s hair) – Cheddar cheese singles
Off white (Bandit’s skin) – American cheese singles
White (eyes, Herbie’s clothes) – radish
Skin tone (Bandit’s nose) – ham
Green (Herbie’s face, hands and legs) – broccoli stem
Red (Bandit’s shirt, Ribbon on the clock) – red pepper
Black (Bandit’s clothes, ear, mouth and outlines for Bandit’s fingers, Herbie’s clothes, boots, glasses and clock) – seaweed
I started by tracing the original sketch on a piece of parchment paper, one sheet for each layer. Then using the cut out pieces of parchment paper as a guide I cut the food with an exacto knife.
This photo was taken after the photo shoot was done, so it's missing some small pieces but parchment paper is so durable that you can wash and reuse it if you want.
I originally drew Herbie bigger but I decided to go with the smaller one.
A toothpick to compare how small the piece is. (just in case, I cut out two mouth outlines but didn't end up needing the extra.) The line for the hand was one piece.
Cutting seaweed is tedious but not difficult. All you need is a sharp exacto knife and a nice cutting mat. I bought my cutting mat when I made the Jeremy Brautman sandwich and now I can’t live without it. I wish I had it when I did Shadow of the Colossus grilled cheese and the bento and gomoku-sushi of Okamiden.
I finished the seaweed pieces first, and sandwiched them in a paper towel. Then I cut out the pieces of cheese, put them back in the original plastic packaging and kept them the fridge. The veggies were cut right before I assembled so they wouldn’t dry out.
My main concern was the density of the soup.
The beet soup was pretty thick. But I didn’t know if the character was too heavy or not. I even thought of putting each character on a slice of a baguette and putting it on the soup. But I felt like it wouldn’t look as nice as putting a character directly onto the bright colored soup.
After thinking about it for a while, the impatient part of my brain (which is a pretty big part of my brain) said “Oh screw it.”
I asked Derek to get ready with the camera as I placed each layer.
First to go on the soup was the Bandit.
He didn't sink. Phew.
Look how sneaky he is.
I was glad that the fingers didn't break off. The outline for the ear is one piece as well.
I'm proud of the outline for the fingers. But I could've cut the red pepper thinner.
…but the soup quickly started to seep around the edges of the food.
Perhaps two layers of cheese would've helped?
As Derek shot photos of the Bandit, I quickly got ready another bowl of soup with Herbie & the Clock.
Herbie and the Clock
Black sesame seeds were perfect for his nose.
Look at his tiny boots!
The Clock on a piece of baguette
Even the baguette wasn't safe from the mighty power of beet soup. The bread was completely dyed within 15 minutes.
Herbie with his pink hand.
The characters were flat, so it might not be that impressive to see the characters from different angles, but you can see how quickly beets can dye food.
Neat discoveries:
- You can put stuff on beet soup and it probably won’t sink.
- Beets are super yummy.
- Beets can dye food easily and SUPER FAST.
I’ve always used purple cabbage juice + a drop of vinegar to naturally dye food pink, but now I know that I can use beets as well.
Light reflection on the soup was also unexpected. Any advice?
Overall, even with some slight discoloring around the edge of each character, I am pretty happy with it. I LOVE the color and the simple & stylish design of the characters was a delight to work with. I can assure you that this won’t be the last time I make food based on Simogo creations.
Oh and if you’re wondering what “cheese with seaweed” tastes like, it doesn’t taste weird. Seaweed just adds flavor like basil or oregano does.
Anyway, Beat Sneak Bandit is so addictive, and both the graphics and music are so good that anyone can play and enjoy it. But I must tell you, the more stages you clear, the harder it’ll get to steal all the clocks. But that makes this game so much more than just a cute rhythm game.
I just heard that Simon and Gordon are starting work on their new game, and I already can’t wait to see what they will create next. I mean, the next game has to be REALLY AWESOME to top their old awesome games, right?
They like teasing fans with previews and stuff on their blog and twitter, so follow them on Twitter, FB, and their blog!
For more pictures of my bento, visit Bento and non-bento! set and Bento details! set on my flickr page. (On the photos in the “Bento and non-bento!” set on my flickr, you can see the notes on the food explaining what they are.)
I was born in Japan, lived in New York for a while and now living in San Diego, California. I love creating things with my hands in my free time whether it’s making character bento or stuffing stuff! And now I'm working for 
{ 3 comments… read them below or add one }
Looks delicious and very healthy!
I never saw a beet soup before, can you share with us the beet soup recipe? (^.^)
In my country beet has been used as pink coloring much more frequently than red cabbage with vinegar. However it’s much stronger so one should be careful when using it. Especially with white rough plastic and non treated wood. I’d advise also to use fresh beet instead of the pickeld one – it will color it much faster.
Cheers from Croatia,
Marina
I used a recipe I found online but ended up changing it a lot on the fly because the consistency of the soup was not as it was described. You can’t really mess it up because the soup uses so few ingredients. Basically I grilled & chopped beets and cooked in chicken stock (the recipe said beef stock though), and put in a food processor.
Wow. Thanks for letting us in on your process. It’s cool to see how it went from idea to creation to finish.
. And you answered just what I was thinking – how does this stuff taste. (Does cheese with beet soup taste good?) Though, when your boxes are more complex, how do they taste? Do you ever mix sweets with salty/savory stuff? If so, how does that go? Makes me want to “make” them (put the food combinations together, albeit no nifty picture) just to see what bento boxes taste like.