Mochi - 3 Ways

Mochi

When I lived in Hawaii there were many, many times when I had the chance to attend pot lucks where the most delicious food was shared.  Even in high school - it seems like we had all sorts of parties and parents sent in food.  One of my favorite sweet treats was Mochi.

A classmate who was of Chinese descent always brought it in - his mom was tickled that I liked it so much.  When I started reading about this treat recently, I had to try my hand at it.  Luckily, I found Mochi at Jungle Jim's last week.

The Mochi that I had in Hawaii often looked like this.

source

With food coloring added - but the ones I tried were usually in squares.

Mochi is a Japanese dish made from rice and is often served sweet.

Here I'll share 2 sweet and 1 savory Mochi dish that I tried for the family last night.

I started by cutting the Mochi into 12 rectangles so we could each try the 3 ways of cooking.

For one sweet and one savory dish, they are cooked on the stove in a couple of tsps of olive or sesame oil.

Once they are cooked for 5 minutes or so on one side, you turn them over to cook on the other side.

For the 4 savory ones I added a drop of Soy Sauce to the top of each one (see up front).

I placed the other 4 sweet ones on a cooking sheet and cooked them for 7 minutes at 450*.

Very puffy when they're done.

The two sets of sweet Mochi I placed in serving dishes and drizzled a sweetener on top.

In this case I used Brown Rice Syrup.

You could use agave or maple syrup or any sweetener.

For the savory ones I followed The Kind Diet recipe and wrapped them in Nori with a little bit of Daikon radish.

So Mochi 3 Ways - Savory with Daikon and Nori, Sweet on the stove top, and Sweet in the oven.

I'm new at working with Nori but I can tell you the savory one was my least favorite. 

The radish was great but the Nori was overpowering. 

I liked the puffy oven-cooked one the best!

Double click to print as a 5x7 recipe card.

どうぞめしあがれ

(douzo meshiagare)

Japanese for Bon Appetit!