Every Tuesday I go out to Toyota kindergarten to spend three hours in various classes with the kids, then teach an English class. Today Toyota kindergarten was having a mochi day, so we went out early to join in the… mochiness.
Mochi is a sticky, gooey, food made by pounding rice. Basically you steam rice and then put it in an oversized mortar. Once it’s in there you start pounding it with a big wooden hammer (think Mario vs Donkey Kong), until it no longer resembles rice. Amazing that you can squish rice into edible play dough.
So we got there and the kids were all having turns pounding the rice with their mini hammers. They weren’t really making much progress. Nick and I got a go, nothing much to it, just hammer the rice in the oversized mortar. After it was all made they gave us a plate full in the staff room.
About half the mochi were covered in sticky soy sauce, and the other half were covered in some sort of bean powder that reminded me of cinnamon but tasted nothing like it. We only had eight or so medium sized mochi balls on our plates, but I could not finish it. It was too much.
The mochi was strange, because no matter how much you chewed the mochi, it didn’t seem to get easier to swallow. Add to that the fact that the stuff it was coated in was sickly in large quantities, and it made for a difficult time. I couldn’t finish the plate so had to leave about half.
It was interesting seeing the mochi made, I knew it was pounded rice, but I didn’t realise it was just pounded rice. Mochi is ok by itself, but I think it tastes a lot better with ice cream inside it.
Andrew
Aunty Denise said she had this stuff when she was there and she agrees it was very hard to eat and not at all nice. She said you will get it alot now right thru to New Year where you have it all the time.