Friday, May 11, 2007

yomogi mochi

I've been on some kind of "wa" (japanese) kick these days. For some reason I want to eat mochi or a Japanese type of sweet. Maybe it was my success making these, but today I wanted to try something a little different. Yomogi mochi. Yomogi is mugwort, the Japanese word sounds much nicer than the English translation. Yomogi is actually a weed (no, I don't think you can smoke it), and you can often find it amongst other weeds outside. Sometimes yomogi mochi is also called kusamochi (literally weed rice cake).

I bought the yomogi dried. You have to reconstitute it in hot water to get it to the consistency to use for mochi making.

I followed the daifuku recipe which I posted previously and added the reconstituted yomogi after cooking the mochi for 4 minutes in the micro. I then put a dollop of koshian in the middle and sealed them up.

The mochi was so soft and the sweetness from the koshian was just enough. I think next week I'll make a western version mochi. Stay tuned!

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Kat, I got so excited I decided to mail u first, and I haven't even take a pix of the finish product yet haha, anyway, will see it sometime next week I hope ..not gonna give out details here, but hope it'll be a sweet surprise, ok ? hehe

K and S said...

Cool MeltingWok, can't wait to see your finished mochi :)

Take care.
Kat

Anonymous said...

Actually yes, you can smoke it! It has a mild sedative effect, and helps in remembering your dreams, sometimes induces lucid dreaming. It can also be drank as tea for the same effects. Either way, the taste is very nice and I've been looking for ways to use it in my cooking. Especially the fresh leaves, they grow all around my house. Thank you for the tips!
Elise

K and S said...

whoa! that is good to know Elise! thanks for the heads-up.

Take care.
Kat