Recipe: Gohei Mochi/五平餅 (Patreon)

I tried Gohei Mochi for the first time when we visited Korankei Gorge and I really liked it. Still sore that I only bought one to split between the two of us, I decided to try and make it at home. 

I found a bunch of recipes online and kind of picked and chose and came up with the below recipe. It's a very forgivable recipe, I think. 

But first real quick, Gohei Mochi is unique to Nagano, Gifu, and Aichi Prefectures. It was invented in the Edo Era, but there is still some mystery around it. 

Gohei sounds like the white paper streamers used in the Shinto tradition, so some think it was made as an offering to the gods. 

Others say it is a different pronunciation of 'gobei' lumberjack. 

One thing I found mentioned a lot was that these tasty treats were eaten by people in the mountains, working or living there. It was an easy portable meal. All you had to do was press some rice around a stick, spread some miso on it and roast it over a fire. 

It got fancy later. 

****

Ingredients: 

1 cup mochi rice

1 cup regular rice 

*I did half and half, some recipes had 100% regular rice, some had all mochi rice. I'm sure your favorite combination would work fine.

60 grams walnuts 

15 grams cashews

10 grams almonds

3 Tablespoons sesame seeds

*walnuts is the most commonly used

3~4 Tablespoons miso 

*I used white, but some recipes called for red, so I imagine either or a mix would be just as good. Whatever you like.

3 Tablespoons kibi (raw cane) sugar 

*I suspect this isn't as sweet as white sugar--any sugar will do, honey even! Add or take away as you like.

2 Tablespoons mirin

1 Tablespoon sake

1 Tablespoon soy sauce 

****

Go ahead and wash and cook the cup of mochi rice and cup of regular rice together in your rice cooker. Use a tiny bit less water than you usually do. 

While that's cooking...

It looks like walnuts are the main nut used in the recipe, but I did see some mention of peanuts also added and then a 'whatever you have'. 

I used mostly walnuts but because I had cashews and almonds, tossed some of those in for a little extra something. 

Roasting the nuts and sesame seeds before hand makes the sauce so much more aromatic. 

I put all the nuts and seeds into a mortar and pestle and ground them up. There were chunks and I debated putting them in a coffee grinder to make them smoother, but decided to keep it for texture. 

In a small saucepan add the soy sauce, sake, mirin, miso, and sugar. Boil on low heat, stirring. You want to melt the sugar mostly. 

Which turns into this:

Add the nuts and sesame seeds to the pan and stir well over low heat for a little bit. Mostly you want it to be thick so you can spread it on the rice cakes. 

Then you can take it off the heat while you make the rice cakes.

Once the rice is finished, I used the pestle to mash it up somewhat. Again, I debated how much to mash. I mashed just enough so that it started getting sticky, but kept some of the tsubu tsubu chunkiness of the rice. I was aiming for what I had in Aichi. 

Then I put tinfoil down on a cooking sheet and lightly oiled it. I used cold water to rinse my hands and started making little ovals. I pretended they were old style coins/koban. 

At the shops, everyone wrapped the rice around Popscicle sticks. I saw other recipes just used wooden chopsticks that weren't broken apart and shaped the ovals on them. I didn't feel the need to waste the wood. Gonna be eaten soon anyway.

However, ideally, you're roasting them over a fire and the sticks are important. 

After I got them all shaped into flat ovals, I grilled them for a few minutes on one side just to kind of dry them off and get the rice a little crispy. I think a little browning would be nice. I should have grilled longer.

Next, take them out of the oven and spread some sauce on each one. Some place dunk them (if the sauce is really liquidy). Of course you tasted the sauce along the way. It's quite salty. And sweet. So dunking or covering completely would be too strong. Keeping in mind, the rice has no flavor except 'rice', you can control the salty and sweetness by how much you slather on. Then sprinkle with sesame seeds and grill again for a few minutes. 

Tadah! 

I didn't do it, but I really thought the idea of sprinkling them at the very end with something spicy like shichimi or sansho pepper or even chili flakes was interesting. I'll have to try that next time. 

Two months' worth of postcards are sent out and the Bedtime Story is still on the way! 

XO,

terrie