Mochi Pounding

Random story about me...growing up, I always wanted to marry into a "mochi-pounding" family. Isn't that odd?  This was not a criterion on my "must-have" list for a potential spouse; it was more of an optional added bonus.  During the week between Christmas and New Year's Eve, there would always be a news segment on TV about families gathering together to pound mochi.  It would be an all-day event in which families, friend, neighbors, and calabash aunties and uncles would all come together to pound mochi for the new year.  My immediate family is small, so I always thought it would be nice to be have large family gatherings filled with fun and laughter.

   Lucky for me, not only did I marry a nice sweet guy, I also married into a huge (at least I think it's large) extended family.  It still overwhelms me at the amount of relatives at Mike's family gatherings. Just to give you an idea, I have four cousins all of which are more than 10 years older or younger than me, so we never really hung out and could relate to each other.  Mike has eight cousins all around his age.  Okay, so back to the point of this post, no I did not end up marrying into a "mochi-pounding" family, but Mike's mom's friend hosts a mochi pounding event every year and this was the second year that Mike and I joined in the festivities. 

Mochi rice is soaked overnight and then drained. 

Here's the steamer used to steam the mochi rice. 

Mochi Equipment. 

I'm going to call this piece of equipment a "mochi extruder."  The hot sticky mass of glutinous rice is placed in this container and extrudes out and is cut into uniform pieces. 
The mochi assemblers all line up on both sides of a table and piece of the warm mochi are passed down the table.  People flatten the piece of mochi in their palms and then quickly insert a ball of filling into the mochi.  The mochi is then sealed over the filling. 

Look at that. They have the system down. This is a pan of prescooped azuki bean filling. 

The mochi is then cooled and then someone marks the mochi with colored dots to represent the different fillings. Red-azuki bean filling; Blue-Sweet Potato; Purple(?)-azuki bean and strawberry; Yellow-yellow sweet potato and coconut (I think). 

Happy New Year! Japanese Tradition-Ozoni

Happy New Year Everyone! We hope that 2009 brings you all a lot of joy, prosperity, and good health! I just found out that one of my friends got engaged so it looks like the year is starting on a positive note!
I'm three-fourths Japanese and Mike's full Japanese. This means that every New Years Day we've eaten Ozoni. Ozoni is a soup containing mizuna and mochi. I was told that you eat the soup on News Years Day to symbolize sticking together as a family.
We also eat soba noodles (for long life b/c the noodles are long) and later on we eat fried mochi with a shoyu sugar sauce. Then we split the tangerine that sits on top of the kagami mochi. (See the modified kagami mochi picture above. yeah, it's mochi blocks and an orange). I'm not sure if my mom made it up, but I think that we each it a few sections of the tangerine to symbolize the family sticking together too.
It's funny, every New Years Day, I would dread the ozoni breakfast. I'm a pig in mud when it comes to slurping up the soba and chewing the fried mochi, but something about the gooey-ness of the mochi in broth with the mizuna is one of my least favorite foods. My mom makes a tasty ozoni, and my family loves it and cannot wait to eat bowls of this stuff. My family members would have large bowls of ozoni while I would have a tiny bowl of it because I was obligated to eat the soup so that I would "stick together" with my family.
Here's a secret...growing up, I would be given 1/2-1 piece of mochi in my soup. While I was setting the table, I would quickly break apart my mochi and hide part of my piece in my dad's soup.
And guess what, I married a Japanese guy who doesn't like the mochi in the soup either. He likes the broth and stuff, but not mochi in it. So the dilemna this year was, "should we make ozoni?"

We decided to bite the bullet and make ozoni. Why? Because it's a Japanese tradition and we do not want to lose a cultural tradition. Yes, when we have kids we will make ozoni for them and pretend to like the soup so that they will not lose their Japanese culture. Here's a picture of our modified ozoni with no mizuna because we could not find it in the asian market. I fried the mochi and then put it in the soup to reduce the gooey-ness of the mochi.