huh! Merry Christmas!
Wiki Wednesday #303 - Shuo Nakao / 中尾シュオ
Who is Nakao Shuo?
 |
| Art from Wiki |
It makes sense for me to write about Diffsinger on this blog when I have no fictional stories to post. If you have interest in UTAU as software, then it's likely that you would also have interest in Diffsinger. (Note: I'm posting this out of order. I'm working on a series of texts about Diffsinger as I'm writing this.)
It makes much less sense for me to do the same for mochi. But think about it - mochi is Japanese and UTAU is Japanese! That's a good enough reason, right?
When most westerners think of mochi, they are likely actually thinking of daifuku. It's not a big mix up and it makes sense! Plenty of people will call a Reese's Peanut Butter Cup chocolate because of the chocolate shell. Daifuku is mochi wrapped around a filling, usually bean paste. Something really popular is mochi ice cream. That's just a ball of ice cream wrapped in a thin layer of mochi and it was my first time seeing mochi in real life.
Mochi itself is just pounded short grain glutenous rice. That's it! That doesn't sound like anything interesting really.
Before I made homemade mochi, I was thinking that maybe being enamored with it was just a weeaboo thing. I mean, how great can pounded rice be? Maybe I just wanted to live in an anime
Let me tell you! Mochigome, the specific variety of rice used for mochi, is really good rice. It tastes amazing! The texture of fresh mochi is insane.
It's a bit hard to describe. It stretches like that insane stretchy cheese that was all over YouTube for a while. It almost has the texture of glue... But somehow in a good way!
I didn't know how to shape it the first few times we made it. I thought it was supposed to stop being sticky at some point and we had messed up. Wasn't a big deal, though. I was grabbing at that sad blob and eating that mushed up rice like a feral animal!
Thankfully, I did figure out how to shape it! Eating fresh mochi straight from the stand mixer is amazing, but actually getting mochi from a cooled down blob isn't very fun.
Once it's cooled and in balls, it's no longer like glue. I can't think of a good way to describe it! It's squishy and stretchy. It still tastes like rice because it's still just rice in a different form factor.
In the upcoming articles, I will talk about making mochi.
There's a lot you can do with mochi! I think most westerners don't know that mochi isn't actually just a dessert. Most of the common ways of eating it in Japan involve using it as a component in a savory dish. While it can be (and often is) used as a dessert, that's not all it is limited to.
If you're able to, then I think it's a good idea to try making mochi! It is super yummy! If you make it using rice, there's only one ingredient if you just want to eat it directly from the mixing bowl of the stand mixer.
No comments:
Post a Comment