Mochi
- Mochi is a Japanese Food. For the pre-Columbian Peruvian culture, see Moche; for the drink, see mocha.
Mochi (餅) is a food prepared from rice and used as an ingredient in several Japanese recipes.
How mochi is cooked:
- Prepare steamed glutinous rice;
- Either pound it in a traditional usu mortar or process it with a modern electric machine; and
- Form it into various shapes (usually a circle or square).
While eaten year-round, mochi is a traditional food for the Japanese New Year and commonly sold and eaten at that time. Mochi is very sticky; every year after the new year, it is reported in the media how many people die from choking on it.
Popular dishes with mochi
- Zoni, a soup containing rice cakes. Zoni is also eaten on New Year's Day. In addition to mochi, zoni contains vegetables like honeywort, carrot, and red and white colored boiled kamaboko.
- Yaki-mochi, a grilled rice cake. After the rice cake is grilled, put soy sauce and wrap a toasted laver (nori) around the cake.
- Shiruko, a sweet azuki bean soup with pieces of rice cake. In winter, Japanese people often eat it to warm themselves.
- Daifuku, a soft rice cake stuffed with sweet filling, for example an - a sweetened bean jam.
- Mochi ice cream, small balls of ice cream wrapped inside a mochi covering. This is very popular in California.
Other Facts
- In Japanese folk tradition, rabbits living on the Moon produce mochi in the traditional method with (rabbit-sized) mallets and mortars, although the method they use to export it to Earth remains a mystery.
- Mochi is also the name of a monster type and character in the game and TV series Monster Rancher. It is so named for its physical resemblance to a type of mochi pastry.