Mochi is ridiculously simple to make. Yesterday's efforts involved steaming a large pot of rice (wrapped in gauze to stop it from clogging up the steamer pot) and transferring the cooked end-product to an automatic rice pounding machine. The arm at the bottom of this machine spins around, causing the rice to form a large doughy ball shape. It took barely 20 minutes in this machine for the rice to be thoroughly pounded, at which point the Vice Principal lifts it out and onto a (rice) floured tray.
The steamed rice being pounded into a dough ball by the machine. The rice is still very hot at this stage.
The dough is then kneaded for a short while before being fed through a hand-cranked tubing device (functioning somewhat akin to a sausage-making machine). The dough tubes are cut at 5cm intervals and dropped into a large tray filled with rice flour.
The dough balls are now ready to eat!
To eat the mochi now all you have to do is put a dough ball onto your plate, top it with a tablespoon of red bean paste and sprinkle with sweetened toasted soybean powder. It is deliciously sweet but also amazingly chewy - I imagined at times that it would be a lot like eating glue or that bouncing ball of drama in the Robin Williams film Flubber. Apparently you can also cook the dough balls in the oven for a few minutes each and eat them as mini dinner rolls with soups etc.
The finished product, moments before I 'nommed it.
My teachers kept trying to get me to take some home, and truthfully I should have accepted. I would have loved to have tried cooking the dough balls and turning them into a little savoury snack. Unfortunately, after smashing down two rather large sweet mochi cakes at school I was incredibly full and couldn't bear the thought of eating anymore of the rice dough! Oh well, next time.
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