Chikara Soba is a Japanese dish, consisting of cooked soba noodles served with a piece of rice mochi on top.
Mochi
Daifuku
Daifuku is a small, soft, round, sweet rice bun. It is made from the rice paste called “mochi” wrapped around a filling which becomes the middle. There is no cooking involved; they are served as is. There are two common sizes: one about 1 ½ inches (4 cm) wide, and another about large enough to…
Mochi
Mochi are sticky, chewy Japanese cakes made from pounded, steamed sticky rice (or from sticky rice flour called “Mochiko”, aka Sweet Rice Flour.) They can be savoury or sweet, and may be flavoured. Without any flavouring, they are just bland, rubbery balls. Sweet flavourings include honey, sweet bean paste, and fried banana. More savoury or…
Mochitsuki
Mochitsuki is a Japanese cooking technique. It is the act of pounding steamed sticky rice, in order to make “mochi” rice cakes. The steamed rice must be pounded when it has cooled down a bit, but is still hot. It is put into a mortar called an “usu” and pounded with a mallet on a…
Usu
Usu are large Japanese mortars about the size of a medium barrel used to pound cooked sticky rice in preparation for making mochi.
Warabi Mochi
Warabi Mochi is a Japanese dessert sweet. It is not made with rice, as other mochi is, but rather from Warabi starch. Cheaper ones may have other starch mixed in to make them more affordable. They are soft, and slightly sweet. The gelled starch has the consistency of a jelly or custard. It comes in…
Yukimi Daifuku
A “daifuku” is a Japanese dessert that is a rice cake with mashed bean inside it. Yukimi daifuku is one that instead of bean in the centre, has ice cream. To make it, thin white skins of steamed, pounded rice (mochi) are wrapped around mochi rice. The mochi shell is chewy and gummy, but not…