In this recipe, we will make the secret super food of the samurai called mochi. You have probably heard of mochi ice cream, but mochi has been a staple Japanese food, with many different fillings, for millennia. We will make the closest possible mochi that samurai would have eaten. Along with mochi, we will also make daifuku. Daifuku is a red bean paste-filled version that came around in the 1700s. The most basic traditional mochi that samurais ate was made only with mochigome rice. The mochi with anko paste is called daifuku and it also showed up in the 17th century. Daifuku refers to any mochi, but the literal translation is “great luck.”
Samurais were mostly pescatarian. They did not have a lot of room to raise farm animals, but they had access to the sea. So people ate a lot of seafood, along with a lot of rice. Japanese people have a spiritual connection with the sea because it is an important part of their diet and culture. It is said that the spirit of rice is called Inadama, and it lives inside the mochi. So people who eat mochi absorb that spirit and become revived.
Right before new year’s, Japanese people have a celebration called Mochi-tsuki (“pounding mochi”) where the whole family or even a whole community get together and make mochi. The mochi-tsuki tradition began in the Heian period between AD 794–1185.
Ingredients for Mochi
- Mochigome rice
- Water
How to Make Mochi
- Soak rice for about 6 hours or longer, depending on how soft you want your rice to be.
- Put a bamboo steamer on the pot and cover it with a cheesecloth.
- Put rice on the cheesecloth and steam it for 30 to 45 minutes.
- Take the pot off the heat but do not remove the steamer.
- Wet your hands and tools so that they do not get sticky.
- Now, start pounding. The goal is to disappear all the grains of rice by converting them into a nice, smooth, creamy texture.
- Now, when the mixture has reached the creamy stage, prepare the board with rice flour and divide the rice into small sections.
- Form the portions into balls.
Food Notes
- Archaeologists have found steaming tools dating back to between 583–300 BCE.
- Rice flour became a staple of western diets in the 1980s as a gluten-free alternative to wheat flour.
Ingredients for the Anko
- 2 cups of adzuki beans
- 2 cups of rock sugar
- Water
How to Make Daifuku
- Soak beans overnight. Prepare the beans for cooking and let them simmer till they become nice and tender.
- In the next step, crush the sugar. This is what they would have used to sweeten the anko.
- When the beans have cooked, drain and rinse them.
- Add crushed sugar to the bean pot. The beans still have enough moisture left to melt the sugar. It will turn into syrup around beans. Let it simmer till the sugar is melted entirely. Do not crush the beans.
- Take the beans off the stove once they have become a thick paste. Now, let it all cool.
- Take one rice ball and spread it. Then take one spoon of the anko paste and put it inside the rice ball.
Food Notes
- Rock sugar is made from refined sugar so it does not have a flavor.
- In feudal Japan, the farmers would eat mochi as a snack in the fields. And samurai would have mochi as a pre-battle snack to fuel up on the sugar and the carbs. There is a saying ‘You do not want to hear a snacking samurai” because it indicates a battle is coming.
- Samurai usually ate brown rice. White rice was reserved for royals and the upper class.
Now you have both mochi and daifuku to try out. On the first attempt, you might not get perfect results, but do not worry – you will get there! Also, if you want, you can try making mochi your own way. Make any filling you want to add.
