Gung Hee Fat Choy! and a Butter Mochi recipe, too!

butter mochi

Schatzi: Okay, so the new year actually started on Monday, but who’s counting? One of the best ways to ensure good luck in the new year is to eat sweets as part of your celebrations, and for that purpose I submit to you a Butter Mochi recipe.

If you’re not familiar with mochi, it is a cake made from glutinous rice that has been soaked, cooked, pounded into a paste, and then formed into shapes. (Incidentally, if you’ve ever wondered who has the time to do this, just look at the moon. There’s a rabbit up there, pounding mochi. You can see him without even looking too hard.) Mochi comes in many varieties, and is used for many Japanese confections, like manju, chichi dango, and daifuku (one of my favorites is yomogi daifuku). Mochi also has many relatives in other Asian cuisines such as gau, and suman and bibinka, in China and the Philippines, respectively. I’m especially fond of the Okinawan sweet potato mochi.

Mochi is one of those things that has changed a lot over the past century, as people in Hawaii have adapted it to tastes and available products. It’s easy to find recipes for peanut butter mochi, chocolate mochi, pumpkin mochi–whatever! One of the most popular of the “new wave” mochis is butter mochi, which is a coconut custard-like baked mochi. It’s very simple, but rich and sweet. I grew up making butter mochi (among other varieties–microwave gau, anyone?); where the Mainland girls I read about in books made chocolate chip cookies or fudge, my friends and I loved making butter mochi. It’s a very sticky, gooey treat, with a rich sweetness and faintly coconut flavor.

The ingredients are simple enough, but I suggest scouting a local Asian market for the mochiko  (sweet rice flour) if it’s hard to find. It’s only a $1.49 at some marts here, but more than double that at Fred Meyer–when I can find it! The batter will look like a liquidy yellow cake batter and fill the pan almost completely, but don’t worry, because it won’t rise very much. It puffs up a bit as it bakes, but deflates as it cools. There are any number of butter mochi recipes online, and most are fairly similar, with only slightly varying proportions. This recipe can take anywhere from 1.5 to 2.25 cups of sugar, depending on your sweet tooth. You can cut out a teaspoon of vanilla, even, if you want the coconut flavor to shine. Another popular variation is to top the mochi with shredded coconut before baking. I never bother.

too sweets to the sweet

A study published Monday claims that researchers have detected mercury in high fructose corn syrup (HFCS), which as well all know, is a nearly ubiquitous additive in processed foods from ketchup to breakfast cereal. Apparently, the source is a caustic soda and hydrochloric acid combination used to convert corn into HFCS–sounds so innocuous, doesn’t it?

Granted, the amounts found were very small, mere “traces,” but considering the vast array of food products containing the stuff, and therefore the vast amount of HFCS ingested by the average American, and you have an interesting idea about mercury levels. Foods that tested positive include Quaker Oatmeal To Go, Hershey’s Chocolate Syrup, Nutri-Grain Strawberry Cereal Bars, Hunt’s Tomato Ketchup, Coca Cola Classic, and Yoplait Strawberry Yogurt. See the list for more.  We’ll see how it works out, I suppose.

Read the study here.

Ukrainian Christmas

Schatzi: Every Christmas (and Easter), my sisters and I drag our devoted swains over to Dad & Gina’s for a delicious Eastern European feast. My father’s grandparents were from the eastern corner of Ukraine, in the shadow of the Carpathian Mountains, and they had a large part in raising him. We try to celebrate this heritage with our dinners, which over the years have evolved from small family dinners to large potluck free for alls of Eastern European cuisine. We’ve all developed some specialties, too: I beg Malia to make her lamb meatballs in pomegranate sauce, and beg Maiya for her Cranberry Mousse; they beg me to make Saffron Pudding, and we always enjoys Heather’s holubtsi. Though Grandma Ohar probably would have fainted at the idea, we tend to try any recipe from the former Soviet Union, and our potluck guests branch out even farther.We also serve a variety of vodkas and other beverages, like kvass.

This year I did not make anything, being tragically short on cash and time. Instead, Eli and I brought some lovely blue Brie and Żubrówka; we’ll be ready for Easter, however. The following are pictures of a few of the treats we enjoyed this year. Items not pictured include a chicken paprikás, cranberry kissel, brandy cake, bran rolls, kvass, cheesecake, and more. If you’re patient, and follow the pictures all the way, you’ll find a Georgian Green Beans recipe we make often.

Maiya's vegetarian borshch

salad

Hello, 2009!

Schazti: Hey, it’s been awhile (cue Ween, haha), but we’re still here–and still eating! Being not bright, and still trying to get a handle on my lovely new digicam that Eli gave me for my birthday, I didn’t do a very good job of documenting what we ate over the Christmas break. For that, I will be punished. In the meantime, I’ll try to catch us up on a few activities from Christmas and January, and get on with the current updates.

Christmas turkey