Sunday morning pretties.....

Heartless, unfeeling bastard hasn't sent me a poem in months - and then out of nowhere, he posts THIS.

OK, well, actually, heartless unfeeling bastard has been having real life for a very long time and evidently Aethelmearc 12th Night was the first time they let him out of his cage in a very long time. So I must forgive him. Especially since he's given me permission to add the picture to the Samurai Eye collection.

Hmm, smells like the kabocha can come out of the steamer....

I just remembered there's a REASON I don't bake.

All my foodie friends are invited to laugh now.

 I thought I'd make some kabocha manju for Estrella, using this recipe. http://www.grouprecipes.com/15474/kabocha-manju.html

The recipe calls for 1/2 pound of kabocha. That means that I had enough kabocha for more than four times this recipe, so I sliced it up, steamed it and used about half of it with the amount of sugar, salt and cinnamon called for. That's right, 1 pound of kabocha to the sugar, salt cinnamon needed for half a pound of kabocha. Kannon the merciful on a pogostick, it's a good thing I did. It's plenty sweet at this mixture .In fact it's a religious experience.

The dough, well, the dough is a f****** disaster. Make that a f****** disaster twice over. Proceeding on the logic that rice flour would be the right thing to use, I started with that. It would not become dough, not with that amount of water. After struggling with the rice flour with just turned into strings in a bowl of powder, I tried the same proportions using plain old white flour. It started out looking like dough, it even acted like dough, but it went tough on me way too fast and wouldn't stick to itself.

Roll them into balls, it says. Hah. Right. Like the goo is going to stay in the middle. I ended up making little gyoza-like dumplings, which, wouldn't stay pinched shut! There are ten ugly bastard stepchild embarrassments of kabocha gyoza sitting in the steamer cooling right now. I have no illusions about the dough even being close to right. It can't possibly be.

I should add that my work surface consisted of my ironing board, my postage-stamped counter and my sink. I was rolling dough on a board in my SINK using an old sake bottle as a rolling pin, OK? Sue me, I  live in an apartment.

I feel like crying and kicking things. Instead I threw out half a bag of perfectly good flour and half a box of perfectly good rice flour because it makes me feel better.  There's a pound of steamed, chunk kabocha in the fridge that may get ground up for soup. But what do do with the rest of the filling? A Pennsic memory of eating syllabub with 'Nilla wafers come to mind. I'm thinking kabocha goo would taste damn fine on graham crackers or digestive biscuits.

I have wasted enough of this damn day on kabocha f****** manju. Teryaki chicken is doing its thing in the oven, rice is soaking and I'm gonna make onigiri.

EDIT. I pried a cooled monstrosity off the steamer. It came apart in my hands. The dough is nothing to write home about and only contributes to the wrongness of concept of this recipe. Every other sort of manju I have ever actually had is cakelike. This thing is not.

Saionji's Teriyaki Onigiri

Onigiri (rice balls) probably started as soldier's rations. In their simplest form, it's just rice and salt, cooked and rolled into a ball or nowadays molded into a shape, suitable for carrying away to eat later. They are the ultimate Japanese fast food and nowadays come with all sorts of ingredients added.

Here's how I make 'em.

Two boneless, skinless chicken breasts  (or a similar amount of salmon filet which is also yummy) and any generic teriyaki sauce will do. Marinate 'em. Toss 'em in the oven until done. Cool. Cut or tear into small pieces.

2 cups glutinous sushi rice
3 cups water
Soak rice for about 15 minutes, then start heating your water. As soon as it hits a rolling boil, reduce heat to a simmer and cover for 20 minutes. Be sure to go give it a stir every several minutes so it doesn't scorch and stick to the bottom of the pot. Turn off the heat, let it stand covered for another ten minutes. Sprinkle two  tablespoons of rice vinegar over the rice and give it another stir. Dump in your shredded chicken (or fish) and a bit of sauce and stir into the rice so it's well mixed.

At this point, reach into the pot and carefully see if you can touch the rice with your hands without getting burned. It needs to be cool enough for you to handle to roll the onigiri. For the next part, I set my rice pot in the sink (with the plug in so no stray rice clogs up my landlord's pipes), with a bowl for the onigiri on the counter to the left, a bowl or pan of water in the sink next to the rice pot and a salt shaker to my right.

Wet your hands in the bowl - sprinkle your left hand generously with salt, put down the salt shaker, rub your hands together and grab a handful of warm rice mixture. Form it into a ball.* Set it in a bowl, wet hands, salt and repeat until you're out of rice mixture.

Optional garnishes may include sesame seeds, furikake, seaweed strips. Or not.

I find that if you get your onigiri into plastic containers or ziplocks and immediately into the refrigerator while still warm, the resulting condensation inside the container will keep the rice moist for several days.

If I'm serving to people who have never had onigiri and might be nervous about taking a whole one, I tend to go with a golf ball sized onigiri as a non-intimidating portion. If you're feeling creative and sculptural, you can easily do "hockey pucks" or even the classic triangular wedge. If sculpting is not your thing, they do make molds for onigiri.