Making Rice Cakes

I would like to introduce an unique food event which was held during the last winter break. During the break, I stayed at my friend’s house in Queens, NY for three weeks. As my friend is a Japanese American, she has a number of Japanese American friends and is part of a Japanese American community. I participated in a few events related to Japanese culture; one of them was mochi-tsuki, which means pounding rice to make rice cakes – mochi.  

It’s a bit arduous for me to describe it in English.Anyway, the process of making rice cake is simple, but not easy. First, we soak the special sticky rice for mochi in ample amount water. After this, the rice is steamed for an extended amount of time.

Then, pound it with a mallet. You need more than two people to pound the rice; there has to at least be one person who assists the pounding to make sure the rice always has liquid. The more the rice is pound, the less solid parts of rice there will be. You need to pound it until the sticky rice comes together completely. 

After these process ends, you can finally eat the mochi. There are several ways of eating it. For instance, someone can eat it wrapped in seaweed while another person puts it in a cup of soup similar to miso soup called zoni. Otherwise, you can dip it into soy sauce, sweet red bean paste, or toasted soybean flour.

zoni

At the time of the event, I had two kinds of soups in which I could put the mochi; one was a zoni soup containing rice cakes, vegetables and fish cake, and another one was a soup which was a sweet porridge of red beans boiled and crushed – it’s called oshiruko. I tried both and they were good enough to remind me of my home country’s taste. 

oshiruko

In general, we Japanese often eat the mochi during the New Year’s season. It’s soft and elastic, so I think it’s easy for one’s stomach to digest. However, because it’s elastic and requires us to chew it well in our mouth, it occasionally happens and is broadcasted on the news that some elderly people choke to death on the mochi every New Year season.