bento#45 pink castle crasher and tom fulp

After I made the Castle Crashers bento, the image was posted in the forum on Newgrounds.com. Newgrounds is a flash game/animation site which was created and is owned by Tom Fulp, who is also one of the creators of Castle Crashers.
The members of Newgrounds saw the bento, and were greatly upset (in a good nerdy way) by the fact that I left out the Pink Castle Crasher. The Pink Castle Crasher only shows up in a very short flash game called “Castle Crashing: The Beard.” The game is “all about Tom Fulp’s commitment to not shave his face until his next console game, Castle Crashers, is completed.” (from the description of the game at Newsgrounds.com) It’s more like a parody game, and when you level up with all regular Castle Crashers, you turn into the Pink Castle Crasher! This smiling Pink Castle Crasher’s got a big lollipop weapon that makes rainbow streaks. Anyway, long story short, people decided to have a contest for an edible Pink Castle Crasher on the forum at Newgrounds. You can see the entries here. (People’s entries can be seen from page 2 and later) I’ve been enjoying everyone’s entry, but since I caused the mess (in their kitchen), I decided to make one too.

Bento #45: Pink Castle Crasher
Created and eaten on: 4/23/2009

Since the game only had the regular four Castle Crashers, tombstones, and Tom Fulp as the big boss, I decided to just recreate a scene from the game, the showdown between the Pink Castle Crasher and Tom Fulp.

I was out of renkon (lotus root), so I got daikon (Asian radish) from a market by my house, sliced it, sauteed it and seasoned with soy sauce, and put it on the bottom of a bento box. For the background, I mixed rice with “Chirashi-zushi mix”, and put it on top of the daikon. Chirasi-zushi is a type of non-fish sushi made with vinegar, carrot, bamboo shoot, shiitake mushroom, and renkon. (“Sushi” means a dish with rice mixed with vinegar and sugar, and it doesn’t have to contain fish.) Why did I use sushi mix? Because I wanted to use beef soboro (seasoned ground meat. See “how to make soboro“) I had it frozen as the ground, and Chirashi-zushi goes very well with soboro. I also knew I was going to use “sakura denbu” (pink seasoned shredded cod fish mixed with sugar) for the Pink Castle Crasher, and because it’s sweet, it’s often used to neutralize the vinegar taste in sushi rice. (It takes time to prepare Chirashi-zushi from scratch, so I used already-made one. :P) After putting the Chirashi-zushi rice, I put soboro for the ground, boiled broccoli for the bushes, and asparagus wrapped with bacon I had cooked the night before for the trees in the background.

If you’ve been following my blog, you probably know that I usually avoid making human characters for my bento. I’ve made several human characters before, that’s because they were cartoony enough that you wouldn’t feel too weird eating them, but Tom Fulp in the game looked more human than any other human character I’ve ever made.

After playing the game for a while, I realized that half of his face would be covered when he was shooting a laser beams from his eyes, so I decided to make him from the scene. I beat an egg and put a little bit of soy sauce in it to make it brown, and made an egg sheet. (see “how to make an egg sheet“) I traced the outline of his hair and beard on wax paper, put it on the egg sheet, and cut the egg sheet tracing with an exacto knife. I was very happy how well it came out!

He and his evil beard.

I put the egg sheet on ham and put it in the bento. I peeled the red part of a couple of fake crab meat, put it on a sheet of seaweed, and trimmed it to make it look like a laser beam. I put it on his face, made his eyes and teeth with kamaboko and seaweed. Then I made tombstones with konnyaku (yam cake).

For the Pink Castle Crasher, I made a barrel shape rice ball and made the body with plain rice. Then I rolled the barrel shaped rice ball in “sakura denbu” to make it pink. I made the white part of the face with kamaboko and fake crab meat. The fake crab meat across the face refused to stay down, and the both sides wouldn’t stay stuck to the side of the face. This was very frustrating. I should’ve probably carved kamaboko for that part, but I didn’t have enough time to make a new piece.  =/ I cut out seaweed using a seaweed puncher and put it on for the eyes and mouth.

See the left side is not stuck to the side of the head? arrrgh!

I made the body with plain rice, cut the pink part of kamaboko (fish cake) for the belt, and used a heart shaped cutter to cut out for the heard mark on the chest. I cut out seaweed for the boots and hands, put them on cheese, and cut the cheese around the seaweed for the arms and legs. I made the lollipop with naruto (fish cake that has a spiral patter on it) and kamaboko. I wish I could’ve spent a little bit more time on this. I wanted to make sparkles around the lollipop. =/

This bento seemed pretty simple when I did the sketch, and most foods were pre-made, but I that’s why I underestimated how long it’d actually take to make this. (again) The color palette of this bento was very washed out and orangey, and I could’ve done something to spice it up if I had more time. It looked unfinished. 😦  Even though I was happy with Tom Fulp’s hair, it came out lighter brown that I wanted. I recently purchased light soy sauce, and the color is a lot lighter than the one I was using before. So just a little bit of soy sauce didn’t change the color of egg that much. If I had put it too much to get the color I wanted, egg would’ve been runny… I think I’d have to purchase *”Tamari soy sauce” next time.

I sent the pictures of my Castle Crashers themed bento to Dan Paladin and Tom Fulp, the creators of Castle Crashers. I thought that it’d be cool if they’d check them out. So I was pleasantly surprised that they both sent me a thank you email almost right away! It’s nice to know that nice people are making your favorite game. I’ll definitely making more bento of their work in the future. 🙂

*”Tamari soy sauce” is a lot darker, not as watery, not as salty as regular soy sauce. It has a very smooth flavor and contains a lot more soybeans than regular soy sauce. In my hometown in Kyuushuu, you eat sashimi and sushi with Tamari and not with soy sauce, but I heard it’s not that common in other part of Japan. (Tamari is often used for Teriyaki dishes) I didn’t realize Tamari was anything special until I came to the U.S., and ate sushi with regular soy sauce, and was complaining to my friends how salty it was. Tamari is usually pretty expensive, so I wouldn’t use it for everything, but I think it’s worth to use it for sashimi, sushi, and coloring egg.

Anyway, the contest ends 4/26, tomorrow, so if you’re interested in winning a figure of a very rare Pink Castle Crasher, go for it!

Pink Castle Crasher:
– rice, sakura denbu, fish cake, fake crab meat, seaweed and cheese

Tom Fulp:
– ham, egg, fish cake and seaweed
– fake crab meat on seaweed

Tombstone:
– konnyaku (yam cake)

Other food:
– daikon
– chirashi-zushi
– soboro
– broccoli
– asparagus wrapped with bacon

For more pictures of my bento, visit Bento! set and Bento details! set on my flickr page.