Mochi

Though I'm far from Japan now, there are still lots of photos to catch up on. One of the many things I miss about Japan is the delicious mochi, which I tried to eat every day (and mostly succeeded).

Mochi is both the Japanese sticky rice, and the sweets that are made from it. Mochi is usually made by cooking the rice, then pounding it into a paste and shaping it into cakes of various shapes and forms, but you can also have sweets that use the whole grains of rice. Mochi isn't necessarily sweet either. My first night on the farm in Fukushima, we had nabe or hotpot, and one of the ingredients was sliced pieces of plain mochi, chewy and delicious.

Pictured first is the kind of mochi most available in North America - daifuku. Unfortunately the packaged kinds do not compare to the fresh version, which you can often buy at temples. This one is from Ninna-ji in Kyoto. It's chestnut-flavoured mochi around an unusually smooth, pale red bean filling, and it was incredibly delicious. The mochi is chewy and soft, the filling firm, dry, and a little grainy, and the richer sweetness complements the plainer taste of the rice.

Sadly less available outside of Japan are the many varieties of plain grilled mochi. The other two pictures are from Matsuyama, where my newfound friend and I had dessert sets after our lunch of traditional udon.

Abekawa mochi is plain rice cake coated in kinako, toasted soybean flour. It has a vaguely peanutbuttery flavour that goes beautifully with the mochi. I really love this sweet.

Iso mochi is brushed with shoyu (soy sauce) and eaten with nori, which might not be your idea of dessert, but it's equally yummy.

There are many many more kinds of mochi, and I tried to eat all the ones that came my way, but I know there are still more left untried...oh well. There's always a reason for another trip!