The Art of mochi making at Takako-San's house

My Okinawan friends invited me over for a very traditional New Year's tradition: making mochi, a pounded rice cake dessert. The Okinawan tradition actually involves wrapping the mochi in a beautiful leaf that, when steamed, smells of wonderful rosemary. Some of these leaves came straight from their garden or from the market down the street. I thought it interesting that as much as I enjoy Japanese textiles in our home decor, many Okinawans love frilly lace and more European country motifs in their home.

Before we begin, a little snack from Reiko-San's kitchen- sweet bean flavored mochi.

It's so darn sticky, you've got to wind it around your chopsticks to eat it.

Or you can always go the route Takako-San went and eat it directly from the leaf, like peeling a fruit roll up off the plastic. ;)

Takako-San and Reiko-San getting ready to make mochi.

A quick glimpse at a very traditional Okinawa meal: fried tofu, bundled seaweed, cut pieces of condensed fish cake, steamed daiko/radish, and my favorite, although I dare not taste it: pigs feet. ;)

Sporting my apron Takako-San lent me. ;) Now let's make some mochi...

Mixing the powdered rice, almost like flour, with water to form a dough, which can be flavored in several ways..

The taste test for sweetness. We made two kinds of mochi; brown sugar and white sugar.

With some work and heavy handedness, a strong dough forms.

Preparing the mochi mound for the leaf

You pat it down a little bit to secure it...

The folding begins...

You continue to fold it neatly, tucking in the top of the leaf and folding up the sides.

You will eventually secure the leaf with a bit of twine. We color coded our two different mochi flavors; white twine for white sugar mochi, and green twine for brown sugar mochi.

The final product, ready to be steamed. This was the toughest part for me, wrapping my mochi just right so it wouldn't ooze out the sides of the leaf. My friends kept having to redo mine, because I was either using too much mochi, or squeezing it too hard onto the leaf or simply not folding the leaf securely around the mochi. It's almost like oragami.

Preparing mochi leaves to be steamed.

One layer is already steaming...

We were able to eventually have two types of mochi steaming at one time. I've never seen a steamer quite this large, a triple decker!

Voila, after twenty minutes of steaming...

The mochi is separated.

The mochi is ready to be served...This one is the brown sugar version we made. It is quite sticky, so chopsticks are used to twirl a small bit around the two chopsticks before eating. You can always eat the mochi straight from the leaf.

Reiko-San working on wrapping some mochi leaves to steam

Taking a break to eat an Okinawan lunch with Reiko-San and Takako-San

Takako-San and her husband, Sokiichi-San.

My new wedding kimono, Look at this stunning piece of artwork!