Making Mochi

Ray and I went over to the day care center this morning to make mochi. A barely perceptible drizzle gradually morphed into a torrential downpour, fallout from a typhoon in Okinawa. This is the first December typhoon to hit Japan n 20 years.

Mochi is made from glutinous rice. The rice is steamed and then poured into a stone mortar. Then you beat it with a wooden mallet until it reaches the desired consistency. The object seems to be get a good pounding rhythm going and to not get carried away and hit the mortar with an ill-aimed mallet blow. This causes the mallet head to splinter slightly and the pounding process stops while you pick the splinters out of the mochi.

The other dads and I huddled under a tarp on the playground. Our job was to stoke the fire to steam the rice and to do the pounding. Most of the moms stayed on the porch and shaped the finished mochi into patties with their children. The fresh mochi was pretty tasty. I followed the example of the guy next to me and wrapped my mochi in a strip of nori before dipping it in a saucer of soy sauce sweetened with a little brown sugar.

The kids got the first batch of mochi, then came outside to take turns pounding mochi with their parents. Every family, I was told, used to make mochi in December for the New Year's celebration. Today only people out in the country do it and the rest of the Japanese buy their mochi in supermarkets.