![]() Mochi is a traditional Japanese food that’s served on New Year’s Day in ozoni and also used as a New Year decoration (kagami mochi) to represent good luck and good fortune. It can be served as a traditional Japanese confection called wagashi, stuffed with sweet red bean paste (called daifuku) , with kinako (sweet soybean flour), stuffed with ice cream, added to soups, or brushed with a little soy sauce, toasted over a grill, and wrapped in seaweed (called isobemaki). The texture is chewy and the flavor slightly sweet. Once pounded, the rice is molded into a ball, rectangle, or other shape. Mochi is a Japanese rice cake made of Japonica glutinous rice, called mochigome (糯米), that’s been cooked and pounded into a sticky paste. It was an experience I’ll never forget because it brought me so close to my relatives and my Japanese roots. We made so much mochi that day that the entire living room floor, which was covered with bed sheets, was filled with rice cakes! My aunt packed a few mochis for everyone to take home that day, which my mother used to make ozoni the next. All the men took a turn pounding and turning the rice until it slowly turned into a chewy dough. It was such a fun and interesting process watching one person pound the rice while the other was in charge of turning it. The men were outside pounding freshly cooked mochigome (short grain sweet rice) using a large mortar called usu (碓), and a wooden mallet called kine (杵), while the women stayed indoors, shaping the mochi into perfectly uniform balls It was New Year’s Day and my whole family gathered at my uncle Nori and aunt Fumiko’s place for mochitsuki ((餅つき), which is a traditional mochi making ceremony to celebrate the arrival of the new year. The only other time I saw it made from scratch was in Japan and let me tell you – it was not an easy process! ![]() Never in my life did I imagine I would be able to make mochi using a microwave. I’m so happy to share this recipe with you today because I’m a huge fan of mochi! Making this mochi recipe at home is so easy that you won’t believe it until you make it! All you need is an immersion blender and a microwave to make these chewy Japanese rice cakes.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |