blog #450 >> Mochi

At last, I finally tried making mochi! I bought ingredients for these way back in January. They turned out fantastic, but the recipe made waaaay more than I thought it would. (Over three dozen.) All I can think is, "This would be the perfect opportunity to have a fund raiser for Japan!" If I sold these little buggers for $1 each, I'd have $40 to send over there in no time! Personally, I wouldn't think twice about making a nice sign and just walking across the street and selling them in front of the Safeway. But since I don't have a food handlers permit, or a quality controlled kitchen, or a peddlers license, I can't even count all the city ordinances I'd probably be breaking. It's times like this I wish I had a good church I was attending... that would be the perfect place to sell these! Anyhow, hopefully someone reading this will make these and create an awesome fund raiser out of them. They're not hard to make, just a little time consuming. I got all the ingredients at Uwajimaya, and the recipe is from JustJENN. I don't normally say this, but that recipe is perfect as is so, DON'T CHANGE ANYTHING. And when it says, stir like crazy... JustJENN is not just joking, you need to stir it really really fast and well. Also, don't skimp on the potato starch, it's super sticky so you can't have too much. Meanwhile, I'll keep on trying to think of who I can legally exploit for donations.

Here are the ingredients for mochi, there's really not much in them. You'll need water, food coloring, 1 box of mochiko sweet rice flour, 1 bag of sweet red bean, potato starch (lots of potato starch) and sugar. I know I took a picture of granulated sugar, but I changed my mind last minute and used super-fine baking sugar instead. It usually works better for anything involving dissolving sugar in water, but I'm sure granulated would have been fine too.


Generously sprinkle your cutting board with potato starch. This was not nearly generous enough.

Wrap red bean in mochi. If I had been smarter I would have pre-rolled out little red bean balls.


And the lovely finished mochi!

This morning I was reading this blog post over at The Food Librarian (who also makes excellent mochi) and I couldn't help but wonder... why is it I can watch houses (on fire!) floating away with cars and airplanes piled on top of them practically unmoved, but I cry when I think of the little kids in emergency shelters eating rice balls. Suddenly there's a link of relation... I like rice balls too! And it all becomes real. ...Needless to say, I just pulled a nice pot of sushi rice out of the oven. I know what I'm eating for lunch!
If you would like to donate money to Japan, you can donate to the International Red Cross (Japan: Earthquake and Tsunami Fund) online here. (I've been trying to get it to work all morning without success. I think it's overloaded at the moment.)

Enjoy!
T