Thursday, February 09, 2006

Project Mochi - Vol. 3 -


Kurumi Mochi (Rice Cake with Walnut Sauce)

Here’s my another experiment with mochi. Kurumi mochi seems to be fairly popular especially in northern part of Japan, but I’ve never tried it before. I combined a couple of recipes I found on the net to come up with this recipe, and I think this can be improved somehow, but not sure how.

Kurumi mochi (rice cake with walnut sauce or glaze?)
Ingredients:
2 pieces of mochi
25 g walnuts, chopped
35 g sugar
1+1/2 teasp water
1+1/4 teasp soy sauce







Toast walnuts to bring out their flavor (thanks Jen for the tip! :D) and chop them coarsely. Grind chopped walnuts in suribachi. Add sugar and grind well. Add water and soy sauce. Grind some more until the sauce is thick and smooth.
Wet and microwave mochi until tender. Dress with walnut sauce (glaze?). Top with chopped walnuts, if desired.

If you like the sauce runnier, add more water. I tried adding a little sake, too, and it was not bad, but I thought the sake hid the taste of walnuts to some extent.

I used this kind of mochi (made from glutinous rice) this time, but I think mochi made from mochiko (rice flour) will be OK, too.

13 comments:

Anonymous said...

Your mochi sounds delicious, Obachan. Wouldn't mind trying it without sake.

Jennie Durren said...

If you have access to a walnut liqueur, it might be good to use in place of the sake. If I were trying this, I might also want to toast the walnuts to bring out their flavor.

It might be interesting to try caramelizing the sauce, too.

Anonymous said...

Obachan;
The mochi looks delicious. I've had a mochi with sweet red bean paste in the middles, but nothing like this. When I get my hands on some mochi, I am going to try this!!!!!

obachan said...

skyjuice7
I guess many people seem to like this without sake. Out of the Japanese kurumi-mochi recipes I found on the net, only a few mentioned sake.

jen
Yeah! Toasting the walnuts is a good idea! Let me add that to the recipe.
I don’t think I can find a walnut liqueur around here, but it sounds interesting… :)

carlyn
Now I know that you have suribachi at your place ;) I bet you have most of Japanese kitchen utensils, right?

FooDcrazEE said...

can u courier some to me?

obachan said...

Uh...I could give it a try, but it'd be pretty sticky in the package. ;)

Anonymous said...

obachan;
Yes, I have all Japanese utensils...!!!!!!

Anonymous said...

I never knew soy sauce could be used in bringing out such flavours in a dessert! It looks delicious.

Here in Manila, they serve a variety of mochi with sweetened Philippine mango or ube (purple yam).

Is the actual mochi made out of a rice flour dough?

obachan said...

carlyn
I knew it ;)

Katimugambalon
I think soy sauce is usually good with rice products including desserts. Mochi-mango combination sounds really interesting. Wish I could have a chance to give it a try someday.

Our most common mochi --- the kind we eat on New Year's Day --- is usually made by pounding steamed glutinous rice. We do have mochi made from rice flour,too, and they seem to be used mainly for desserts, but I could be wrong. ;P

Anonymous said...

Obachan, this looks delicious! I didn't know kurumi mochi wasn't that common in the south (I'm from the north) - have you tried zunda mochi before? It's similar to the kurumi mochi but the sauce is made with soy beans and is very popular in Tohoku area.

obachan said...

Keiko,
Actually I've tried zunda mochi twice and still experimenting on it. (I read about it in the popular manga, "Oishinbo" and had to give it a try.) The problem is that I used frozen salted edamame, and it had some unpleasant, un-fresh smell. So I decided to stop the experiment until the fresh edamame comes on the market in early summer.
I assume people in Tohoku area have more mochi repertoire than Shikoku residents. ;)

Anonymous said...

Why did you have to microwave the Mochi? isn't it soft all ready? You buy it pre packaged I guess and then microwave it to soften it up and get it warm? Is this a warm desert? Frangelico is a liquer that is hazelnut. Perhaps that would be a good diea for next time. The bottle is shaped like a Monk. Very tasty. http://www.frangelico.com/ is the webpage, but you need a flash player.

obachan said...

Oh, Sara, the individually-wrapped mochi we buy here is hard. You need to heat it somehow, like boil, microwave, toast, etc. to soften it. It doesn’t necessarily mean that this dessert is a warm dessert, I guess. Mine cooled completely while dressing it with the walnut sauce and taking photos, but they still tasted good.

Thanks for the link to Frangelico site. You know what? I love anything with hazelnut. That is one of my dream foods. (BTW, that site is so cool. I loved the flash.) I’m not sure if I would like the liquer with this simple dessert, but I want to taste the hazelnut liquer some day, somehow. :)