Making Mochi... from scratch

Our story begins in Whole Foods, a store I both love and hate. Things I love: free samples, organic and local foods, grass-fed beef. Things I hate: over-priced foods that make sustainable eating inaccessible to the masses and only for the elite. Which is why when I go to Whole Foods, I weave my way through the store, snagging free samples at every corner, but never stopping until I reach the bulk food section, a haven of cost-effective yumminess within a sea of unaffordable snobbery.

I discovered the joys of bulk foods only about a year ago, but since then I've tried a number of new treats and returned for some of my favorites. I'm a big fan of the whole dried bananas that taste sweet as candy, and the vanilla almond granola, as well as the organic quinoa, whole grain cous cous, and various trail mixes. But this week I was looking for rice to go with the stir fry I was making for dinner. Noting the 5 or so types of rice available I grabbed the Whole Foods booklet of bulk foods information that describes every item they have and how to prepare it and flipped to page 44: Rice. I ended up with an organic short-grained brown sticky rice for the stir fry, but what really caught my eye was the "Brown Rice - Sweet," which the booklet noted as "Very sticky. It is what mochi and amazaki are made from." I have no idea what amazaki is, but I love mochi in both the fresh and ice-cream-filled states. So without further ado I filled a bag with a small amount of the rice and added it to my basket.

For those of you who aren't familiar with Mochi, it is a Japanese desert made from rice (or rice flour) that is slightly sweet, but becomes sweeter when filled with red bean paste, ice cream, or other goodies. It can also be pan friend to crisp the outsides, or added to more savory dishes. The texture is sticky and soft, but not too stretchy.

When I arrived home I immediately began looking for mochi recipes on google. It quickly became apparent I had made a big mistake in trying to make mochi from rice. All of the recipes I found called for Japanese rice flour, not plain rice. Oops. But I was relentless; I already had my rice and I was going to make mochi. I found a couple videos showing Japanese men pounding large wooden bowls of the sticky rice with a large wooden pestel until all the rice grains were broken and what remained was a mochi dough. Finally, I found a recipe (2 actually) that explained how to make mochi straight from rice. Here's the recipe: http://au.answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20080510053903AAYSkJB

I followed the recipe approximately, simmering 1 cup dry rice in <2 cups water for 2 hours. But I do not own a mortar and pestel, or anything remotely similar. What I do have, is an ancient Cuisinart food processor with a plastic blade for mixing things. I figured that mushing the rice in the cuisinart would be faster and obtain the same effect as pounding by hand. So I plopped the rice in and let the machine do its work for a minute or two.

Now there are plenty of places I could have screwed this up. It might have been the way I cooked the rice, or the type of rice I was using, but it's also entirely plausible that I would have gotten mochi if I patiently pounded that rice. What I got, was not a form of mochi I was interested in eating. It was very sticky, but also somewhat too fluid to use as a dough. And the husks of the grains of rice were still suspended in the mixture, adding a strange texture to what should have been a smooth treat. I tried to lay some on wax paper and sprinkle it with corn starch to make the outside less sticky, but even after drying on the counter overnight it is still a sticky mess.

I have to call this a failed experiment, but I am not disheartened. Next time, I'll just start with rice flour.