I promised to do more and so here’s more.

It’s almost the end of 2014 and New Years is the most important holiday in Japan. One of the key foods of a Japanese New Years is mochi! This time for Absolutely Tasty, I tried soba mochi and ochazuke mochi.

Ingredients for soba mochi:

Fresh mochi (it’s too difficult to use packaged mochi because they’re really hard and dehydrated)

Soba ($1.48)

Mentsuyu (dipping sauce for noodles) ($4.99)

Green onions ($0.99)

Grated ginger and wasabi (optional)

Mochiko (optional, this is just mochi rice flour for when the mochi is too sticky)

Ingredients for ochazuke mochi:

Fresh mochi

Instant ochazuke mix (pack of 8 for $3.99)

Hot water

Mochiko (optional, this is just mochi rice flour for when the mochi is too sticky)

Special tools:

Either a mortar & pestle or a bowl with a masher or rolling pin or some kind of cylindrical tool for mashing things up

My friend invited me to a mochi tsuki event, where you actually pound freshly cooked mochi rice into glutinous mochi cakes. That was really fun, but also fairly physically demanding. Those hammers are damn heavy.

Earn that mochi.

I bought a bunch of mochi to take home and had enough to waste use for this Absolutely Tasty.

Some basic Japanese food knowledge for you:

Mochi is very versatile in that it can be prepared to be sweet, savory, or salty (watch the 24hour EDF batsu game, they show a great example of how flavors can be used in mochi).

Soba is noodles made from buckwheat. It’s got a very rich earthy flavor to it. The way they eat it in Absolutely Tasty is the cold style where you dip the noodles in a soy sauce and fish broth soup, with green onions, ginger, and wasabi as the common garnishes.

Ochazuke is a rice soup. The most basic version being rice, salt, tea, and a little bit of arare (rice crackers) and nori (seaweed). It’s very simple and usually made to make any extra leftover rice easier to finish.

So, starting with the soba mochi.

Step 1a: Cook the soba

Boil a pot of water and add soba noodles. Quantity depends on how much soba mochi you’re going to eat, but I’d say like a small handful of cooked soba for 2 servings of soba mochi is appropriate. You can use whatever soba noodles you like, but a lot of the cheaper kinds use a lot of fillers instead of using just buckwheat. I used Nanka Seimen brand because it has a very strong buckwheat flavor.

I cooked it a bit al dente as you normally would, but I discovered that you should actually overcook it so that it’s super soft and easier to incorporate into the mochi.

Drain the soba noodles and rinse with cold water.

Step 2a: Pound soba into the mochi

I don’t know where I put my mortar & pestle, so I just used a bowl and my rolling pin to mash it up. Dip your mashing instrument in water to keep the mochi from sticking and just keep pounding away until it’s all incorporated. Periodically flip and fold the mochi with a little bit of water.

Doesn’t look very appetizing.

Let’s let that rest and move onto the ochazuke mochi.

Step 1b: Pour ochazuke mix into mochi

I used Nagatanien ochazuke, probably the most famous brand for ochazuke, but it really doesn’t matter what brand you use. It’s tea granules with rice crackers and seaweed in the regular flavor, but there are variations like pickled plum, salmon, etc.

Step 2b: Pound ochazuke mix into the mochi

Make sure you get the ingredients evenly distributed. Just like in the soba mochi, dip the mashing object in water to keep the mochi from sticking and periodically flip and fold the mochi as you keep pounding.

Step 3: Prepare the sauce and hot water

Different bottles of mentsuyu (noodle broth) may have different instructions for how much water to add to dilute the concentrated broth, so follow your bottle’s instruction for that. If there are none, just taste and add water to your liking.

I like green onions, a little bit of ginger, and a tiny bit of wasabi in my broth, but you don’t need to add those things if you don’t want to.

And then boil water for the ochazuke mochi.

Voila! You have yourself a very unconventional mochi dinner, made with very traditional ingredients.

But something’s not quite right. This is missing something very vital for a complete meal…

Step 4: Frisk

Unfortunately, the Japanese super market didn’t carry the regular mint Frisk, so I got the Berry Mint instead. Do I really hate myself this much?

Mixing the Frisk into the mochi was difficult. Those mints are hard to crush! And holy hell, the Berry Mint smell is super strong!

Frisk, part of a complete meal.

Step 5: Consume

Here goes the soba mochi…

Even though I chose a soba that has a strong buckwheat taste, the soba’s flavor was subtle with the mochi. And then with strong garnishes like ginger and wasabi, it was hard to tell. It did taste very good with the noodle dipping sauce, but like the Gaki members said, it was expected. The texture didn’t change much due to the softness of the soba. Overall, it had a very classic Japanese flavor and matched well with the sauce.

Gaki rating: ★★★★★★★★☆☆ (8 out of 10)

Oolong’s rating: ★★★★★★★☆☆☆ (7 out of 10)

I poured hot water over the mochi and let it sit a little bit so that the mochi can melt.

This was a bit difficult to eat because the mochi is so packed that you’d probably have to let the mochi sit in boiling hot water for a while in order to get it really stretchy and easier to bite. Otherwise, I really loved the flavor. The ochazuke mix went so well with mochi, I might like mochi ochazuke more than regular rice ochazuke! It’s got a nice salty flavor and the fragrance of tea was in harmony for a very good mochi. However, while you can drink the leftover soup in regular ochazuke, in the mochi ochazuke, all the flavors are packed into the mochi and so the leftover soup is just kind of like slightly salty starchy water.

Gaki rating: ★★★★★★☆☆☆☆ (6 out of 10)

Oolong’s rating: ★★★★★★★★☆☆ (8 out of 10)

…What the fuck? Hm. The Berry Mint mochi wasn’t too bad. It’s not just straight up sweet and fruity, it was really minty too. But if you have to pick an edible vessel to consume Frisk, mochi wouldn’t be my last option, but it wouldn’t be the first either. It reminded me of chewing on a really stale and large piece of fruity gum.

Endo, there’s something fundamentally wrong with you.

Gaki rating: ★★☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆ (2 out of 10)

Oolong’s rating: ★★☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆ (2 out of 10)