Mochi (mochi) are Japanese sweets that look like a bun or flatbread made from rice dough. Basically, mochi is made from mochigome or glutinous rice. The rice is boiled, then crushed to puree, and the dough is prepared from it. Seeing this process means taking the first step towards Japanese delicacies.
Sweets made from urine
Traditional desserts are prepared throughout the year, but the greatest demand occurs on New Year's Eve. Mochi is the main ingredient for most Japanese sweets such as: Wagashi, Mochigasa, Daifuku. The dessert, called Kusa Mochi, is considered a type of mochi, it has a greenish tint and tastes like Tansy. Also, mochi ice cream is very popular among lovers of sweets. This dish is very easy to prepare: frozen balls are wrapped in mochi, which are then doused with syrup or glaze.
Urine soups
In addition to desserts, the Japanese love to make soups from urine. For example, Oshiruko soup with beans and small pieces of urine, this soup is preferably eaten in the winter season because it has warming properties and helps boost immunity.
Interesting Facts
Japanese people believe that eating urine during the New Year holiday promotes good luck and prosperity. The main dessert during the holidays is Kinako Mochi. Before eating, the dessert is fried, dipped in water, and rolled in sweet soy flour.
Also, doctors advise everyone who has heart and blood diseases, stomach and intestinal problems to eat urine. Plus, this delicious dessert can also be eaten by those who are fasting, thanks to the absence of dairy products in the recipe.
Sometimes in moments of loneliness and sadness, when nothing around us interests us, we really want someone near and dear to come up, hug us tightly, give us kind words and give us warm tea and a delicious dessert.
After all, as you know, sweets lift your spirits!
As a rule, the tea ceremony is accompanied by the consumption of exquisite sweets that will highlight the noble taste of the drink.
The combination of green tea and Japanese dessert mochi creates a simply amazing game of flavors! Mochi dessert will prolong the pleasure of drinking tea.
As soon as we talk about desserts, the most delicate cakes with lots of cream and whipped cream immediately come to mind. But the sweets familiar to Europeans are completely unfamiliar to the Japanese.
A real delicacy from the land of the rising sun is mochi (mochi). This amazing dessert is prepared from rice, which is first turned into paste. These activities are carried out in a “usu” mortar using a “kain” mallet. The cooking ceremony has long been called “mochitsuki”. According to Japanese tradition, mochi is the main guest of the New Year's table.
Ancient legends say that such cakes served as donations to deities or the deceased. It was believed that mochi would certainly bestow happiness and health to anyone who dared to taste it.
This sweet comes from Japan - how to make it yourself?
If you are eager to master the intricacies of preparing Japanese desserts, then go ahead - nothing should stop you on the way to your dream!
So, to prepare dessert you need to have in the kitchen:
1. Powdered sugar - 3 t. spoons.
2. Round glutinous rice – 3 cups.
3.Water - half a glass.
4.Rose petals.
5. A chocolate bar.
Cooking technique:
The Japanese traditionally use mochigome rice to prepare dessert. It must be soaked in a container of water overnight. After this, boil the rice.
Mash the rice using wooden beaters. The process, I must say, is one of the troublesome and tedious ones. It is better for 2 people to join the procedure: let one pound the rice, and the other stir it from time to time. It is also recommended to add powdered sugar to the mixture. This event takes about 40 minutes.
Small round cakes are formed from the prepared sticky mixture. Mochi should ideally be viscous, soft, but at the same time elastic and not brittle. Such a dessert, prepared to the highest class, will not go unnoticed.
The filling is exquisite chocolate melted in a water bath.
Finally, the candies are formed. Take a small piece of dough and form it into a flat cake. Place a little chocolate in the middle of the cake and carefully pinch the dough on top. You can decorate the finished mochi with rose petals.
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You can buy rice flour ready-made, or you can prepare it yourself; for this you need a coffee grinder or a cereal mill.
Pour cold water over the rice and leave to swell for 2 hours, or preferably overnight.
Drain the soaked rice. Transfer the rice to a napkin or towel, and cover with a napkin on top as well. Dry the rice lightly by pressing it with your palm. Do not try to dry the rice completely, you just need to collect excess moisture.
Grind the rice in a coffee grinder and sift through a fine sieve. Large, unground particles can be re-ground.
If you do not use rice flour right away, it must be poured onto paper and completely dried for several hours. Place the dry rice flour in a dry box, close tightly and store in the refrigerator.
Let's move on to preparing the mochi filling.
I prepared different fillings, I will describe a few of them.
First you need to prepare the base of the filling, and then add other ingredients.
Mix the milk thoroughly with sugar and yolks, cook, stirring constantly, until thickened, ~ 10 minutes. You need to stir so that the yolk does not curdle, but if such a nuisance happens, beat the cream with a blender or pass through a sieve.
Pour gelatin with cold boiled water and leave to swell for 20 minutes.
The swollen one should be melted in a water bath or in the microwave at full power for half a minute. Pour gelatin into cream, stir until smooth.
Cool the cream and add mascarpone to it.
You can buy mascarpone ready-made or prepare it according to the recipe in which I described how you can [make mascarpone at home, http://site/recipe/318-tiramisu].
For the filling I used food coloring, vanilla and mint flavors and 3in1 instant coffee
For the Banana filling, mash the banana and add the base to it, mix well. Cover the filling with film and place in the freezer.
Divide the remaining cream base into 3 parts.
For the Tiramisu filling, mix 1/3 of the base with vanilla and instant coffee. Cover the filling with film and place in the freezer.
For the “Mint” filling, mix 1/3 of the cream base with mint essence and lemon juice. Place the filling in the freezer.
For the “Blood Orange” filling, squeeze the juice out of an orange; it took me 1.5 oranges. Add sugar to orange juice and put everything on fire. Pour cold water over the starch and mix thoroughly so that there are no lumps. As soon as the orange juice boils, pour in the starch suspension in a thin stream, while stirring the juice constantly. Boil. Cover with film and leave to cool to room temperature. Transfer the cooled cream to the freezer. Add vanilla to the remaining 1/3 of the cream base. This filling will consist of orange cream and vanilla cream.
To make the “Strawberry” filling, rub frozen or fresh strawberries through a sieve, add sugar to the resulting puree, mix and cook. Mix starch with cold water and pour into boiling puree in a thin stream, stirring constantly. Bring to a boil, cover with film and leave to cool.
When all the fillings are ready, you can proceed to preparing the mochi. Make each batch of mochi one at a time. Since rice dough dries quickly and ceases to be elastic.
Mix rice flour, water, lemon juice, powdered sugar and coloring/cocoa. You can cook the dough in a saucepan, stirring constantly over low heat until you get a lump of dough. But it’s easier to do this in the microwave for 1 minute at full power. Remove from microwave and stir. If you think the dough is very soft, microwave it for another minute. The dough sticks very strongly to your hands and the table. Sprinkle the table with starch and transfer the hot dough onto it. You need to work right away with the dough still hot, it cools quickly and looks like plasticine. Hands and table should be constantly sprinkled with starch.
Even if something doesn’t work out the first time, you can gather the dough into a ball and work with it again. The dough is very pleasant to work with. You can make mochi with your children; they will appreciate this colorful dough.
You can make mochi using a special device for dumplings.
Tear off a piece of dough, flatten it in your palm into a flat cake 4-5 mm thick, put the filling in the middle and gather the dough into a knot. Tear off excess dough and reuse.
I made chocolate mochi with tiramisu filling and banana filling.
Green mochi - mint filling
The mint filling can be prepared in chocolate dough, it will be delicious, because... chocolate loves mint.
Red mochi with blood orange and vanilla cream filling and strawberry filling
I added the dye literally at the tip of the knife.
I used corn starch only because I like it better, but you can also use potato starch.
Sprinkle the finished mochi generously with starch/cocoa to prevent them from sticking together.
I read somewhere that ready-made mochi should be heated in the microwave for a few seconds and then put in the freezer, but I didn’t do that.
From my limited experience, I realized that it would be better and more correct to thicken the filling with starch or agar-agar.
This is what commercial rice flour looks like. It is grayish in color, unlike the one I made myself. I found it on the Internet and bought 1 kg to try. Despite the fact that it is not as snow-white as the one at home, I liked working with it more. For homemade flour, you need to add less liquid than to store-bought flour. But in any case, the good thing is that even if you overdo it with liquid, you can cook it a little longer and the liquid will evaporate and the flour will swell.
Since each rice requires a different amount of liquid, liquid should be added gradually to the first portion.
Morning urine should be placed in a glass jar to settle for a day. The next morning, see which salt crystals have formed on the walls and bottom of the jar.
- If the urine was white, like milk, and, after standing, formed a white sediment at the bottom of the jar, this is carbonates.
- If such a “cloud” forms - this is mucus in the urine - and then a precipitate falls out, in which small transparent crystals similar to glass rods sparkle - this is phosphates. More crystals - tripelphosphates. These are all alkaline salts.
- If shiny reddish or yellowish crystals, similar to grated brick, are deposited on the walls of the jar, this is urates- salts of uric acid.
- And if dark red and even black crystals are oxalates.
In order to better examine the salt crystals, you need to use a magnifying glass ( I use a magnifying glass *7 + good lighting, although the urates can be seen without a magnifying glass). What you see may amaze your imagination.
A routine urine test can also tell a lot about a person's condition.
For example, the presence of red blood cells means that there is blood in the urine; an increased number of white blood cells indicates inflammation.
If the specific gravity of urine is very high, e.g. exceeds 1030 units, it is necessary to check the amount of sugar in the urine - in this case, a disease such as diabetes mellitus is possible. If the specific gravity of urine is low - 1008 or very low - 1005-1002, it is necessary to sound the alarm that the kidneys are not working, and the person may have glomerulonephritis, or diabetes insipidus, or another serious disease. Since with such a specific gravity it is not urine that comes out, but distilled water. The normal specific gravity of urine averages 1016 units.
To determine specific gravity, you must bring at least 100 grams of urine to the laboratory assistant.
