Where hyper-productive grad students are also serial procrastinators;
And health-conscious quasi-hippies have access to industrial kitchens,
Two women will arise with one goal: making homemade mochi.
In this harrowing tale, 2 fiendish friends attempt to batter their humble servant Brown Rice into puffy glutinous submission. Who will reign supreme? Can this unassuming grain overpower two crazed women wielding wooden pestles and le Creuset cookware? Or will concerned co-oppers come to rice's rescue?
From the people who brought you such hits as Multigrain Mochi and Almond Amazake comes an amazing tale of the triumph and power of Brown Rice over incredible odds:
Attack of the Mochi Eaters
a story in email form by Rosalie Roberts
"$4.69!" I thought to myself. "That seems like a lot. What's in this mysterious Mochi stuff? Just brown rice, sea salt, and seeds! Well, I must take it home and taste it to be sure about it."
With that I purchased the seeds flavor of Mochi, chopped it into 1" cubes and cooked it on 450 until it was squishy in the middle and crispy on the outside. Delicious. I dipped it in a little bragg's liquid aminos.
"I'm an industrious natural food nerd" I exclaimed to no one in particular. "Surely I can make some of this mysteriously delicious savory mochi."
To the internet I went, excited by the possibilities of mass mochi sheets drying on my dining room table. All, I imagined, for little more than the price of organic sweet brown rice.
Oddly, I found little information about how mochi was made. Many people wrote extensively on how to make sweet mochi with rice flour, but the main websites about savory mochi featured blurry, far away pictures of smallish, wiry men hovering over gigantic mortars, wielding pestles the size of labrador retrievers. The men seemed exhausted yet determined in the photos.
I enlisted the help of my metalhead vegan fixed-gear-riding friend. She was the perfect helper for operation homemade mochi: committed to the cause of health foods, quirky enough to consider the project, strong enough to endure at least an hour of work, and totally accustomed to hours of loud noises.
I cooked the rice for what seemed like forever, and tossed it in the food processor, naively thinking that would suffice. I removed the processed glop and my clever friend observed that it was still quite full of air and not nearly starchy or stretchy enough. Out came the mortars and pestles. Well, actually, we only had one mortar and one pestle, so my noise-tolerant friend spread her portion of the future mochi out on the table and starting pummeling it with a durable le creuset saucepan.
We imagined ourselves like the determined, exhausted men in the photos and persisted in the thwacking, smashing, whapping, and bludgeoning until our housemates insisted we stop.
I spread out the mochi and let it dry, then flipped it over and let it dry again.
I observed, several days later when I cooked a few bits of the mochi, that it had never gotten even remotely like your perfect-textured mochi. Whatever mochi-pressing devices you have (I imagine them much like those jackhammerish machines used to put hundreds of pounds of pressure on new asphalt), they do their work well.
I'm pleased to report, in spite of my best efforts, that I find your mochi highly superior and entirely worth the going rate at my local natural foods stores.
Sincerely,
Rosalie
To which the good people at Grainaissance responded:
Rosalie,
I am laughing out loud as they say. That note you sent me is a treasure and an inspiration to all of us here at Grainaissance invovled with mochi making. And as a famous person once said, 'I feel your pain'. Because a long time ago I tried, as you did, as you described, to figure out how to make that blasted Japanese stuff called mochi. I had a few advantages you didn't have until now. And with just a few wise comments from an experienced mochi maker, I was able to produce some decent homemade mochi. You know you are making progress when you get the mortar and pestle out. You've seen those sketches of the woman on her knees with the man wielding a wooden mallet. He brings the mallet down on the cooked rice and in between she adds a little water and flips the mochi over so all the rice eventually crushes into to each other. The real trick to homemade mochi with brown sweet rice is this: You have to let the rice soak for 14-24 hours. Then drain off the water and set up a steamer. No pressure cooker, no boiling. You have to set up a steamer. Now I think there may be a way to combine pressure cooking and a steamer. But that will take some experimentation. The steaming process on the stove will take 2 hours. Don't let the boiling water underneath splash up and touch the rice. Anyway there's a few tips. There are more. But I like what you and your friend (fixed gears eh?) did. Hopefully your food processor is OK.
I'm sorry the mochi costs so much out your way. It's about $3-$3.29 out here. I don't think the stores have to charge that much. $4 should be max for now. Thanks for being a fan and appreciating our mochi. We still have problems as we have changed machines in the past year and it has caused me great worry cause the mochi is not as it once was. Still good and I love it though.
Tony Plotkin
President Grainaissance
So there you have it, folks.
In the epic and ongoing battle of rice vs. hippies, rice wins every time.
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