bánh dầy | brown rice mochichi recipe

Mochichi mochichi.  Four ways to eat mochi.

After my previous recipe test, I've been tweaking the macrobiotic brown rice mochi recipe by Jill Ettinger (Organic Authority) and I've compared to a couple of Việt bánh dầy recipes.

My mochi recipe has a lot of variations from savory to sweet applications: steamed, baked, boiled in ginger syrup with mung bean filling (Chè trôi nước), or fried with mung bean filling (bánh cam|orange mochi).  

Steamed and/or baked can be eaten with chả lụa|silky pork sausage. We make do with deli meat for now until I get this year's pork share and give chả lụa making a go. 
Steamed is gooey goodness.  Baked is crispy on the outside, gooey on the inside.

Chè trôi nước is part of the traditional offering to ancestors & deities on birthdays, death anniversaries, and lunar sacred days (Tết Nguyên Đán|Lunar New Year, Tết Trung Thu|Mid-Autumn Moon Festival); Mẹ rể|my mother-in-law introduced me to this.  

Bánh cam is one of my favorite treats.  Bà ngoại|my maternal grandmother used to make these for the grandchildren.

Bánh Dầy|brown rice mochichi recipe

Makes 12

Mochi Dough:

sprouted brown rice

• 2 c. organic sweet brown rice
• filtered water to soak
• 1 tsp celtic/grey sea salt
• 1/2 c. water

For steamed mochi: 

• parchment paper or banana leaves cut into 3.5 inch squares 
• pasture-raised lard or coconut oil 

For baked mochi: 

• parchment paper to cover a baking sheet
• tapioca starch or ground dry brown rice

For Chè trôi nước:

• water
• grated or thinly sliced ginger
• organic coconut palm sugar or fruit syrup*
• 1 cup sprouted organic mung beans
• optional shallots if you like it savory

For Bánh cam:

• organic coconut palm sugar or dried apricots
• 1 cup sprouted organic mung beans
• optional shallots if you like it savory
• organic unhulled raw sesame seeds
• coconut oil for frying

Equipment: 1 quart mason jar, sprout lid (optional), food processor, 2 oz cookie scoop, scraper and pyrex containers, pressure cooker or pot with a steam rack, baking sheet, deep fryer.

SPROUTING:

[1/13/2015 I no longer sprout sweet rice because I find the flavor is more pungent/cloying. I soak overnight with bincho-tan.] Sprout the rice grains (to a notch is fine) and, if you are trying the latter two recipes, sprout the mung beans too in order to reduce anti-nutrients (phytic acid and arsenic).  This can take 1.5-2 days.  Since my daughter is starting extended hours at school on Monday and I need to get lunch together, I started on Friday.  The method I used is to soak the rice and mung beans separately overnight in mason jar with filtered water and a chunk of bincho-tan. Cover jar with a sprout lid (can use a towel).  The next day when I noticed the grains had expanded and almost filled the quart jar, I drained it and let it sit damp for several hours or until the next day until I see a sprout on the germ of the grains.  I probably could have done this Saturday evening, but I did it in the morning instead.  Grains should be rinsed at least once daily with filtered water.  Can take 2-3 days to sprout.  Discard the water.  I personally don't use the rice water for compost/gardening because of the arsenic runoff.  The mung bean water can be grey water recycled.

MOCHI DOUGH:

Pour the grains into the food processor along with 1 tsp of grey sea salt.  Turn it on and slowly add the water until the dough forms.   Remove blades and let the dough sit for 1 hour for the moisture to absorb; this will help ensure the right texture.  When I don't let the dough rest, the texture is grainier like smashed up sticky rice.

steampunk mochi dough

STEAMPUNK MOCHI

Put enough water for steaming into the pressure cooker or steam pot and bring the water up to a boil.  

While that is going on, lightly grease a cookie scoop with lard or coconut oil.  Scoop out a ball of dough and put on a square of parchment paper.  Re-grease the cookie scoop between scoops. Rice cake balls can be nestled next to each other as long as there is parchment paper between them.

Steam in a pressure cooker for 10 minutes or 30 minutes in a steamer pot.

mochi beignet

STEAMED & BAKED MOCHI

Turn your oven to 450 degrees Fahrenheit.  Put a parchment paper on a baking sheet and dust tapioca starch or rice powder.

Coat your hands with tapioca starch or rice powder and make 1-1.5 inch balls.  Flatten them into thick patties approximately 2 inches across. 

Steam in a pressure cooker for 10 minutes or 30 minutes in a steamer pot.

Remove then place on baking sheet with space between for expansion.  Bake for 10 minutes.

CHÈ TRÔI NỨOC

Filling: While the batter is hydrating, cook the mung beans in water with a pinch of salt for 10 minutes. Drain.  Smash the beans and add sugar to taste.  Roll them into 1 to 1.5 inch balls.

Mochi in the Middle
Offering for Lễ Thôi Nôi | 1 Lunar Month Baby celebration

Ginger syrup: In a pot add 4-6 cups of water, ginger slivers, and coconut palm sugar.  Bring to a low boil, then reduce to a simmer.

Mochi: Wet your hands.  Roll 2 to 3 inch balls and flatten them to about 1/8 to 1/4 inch thick.  You may need to add more water to the dough to make it more elastic.  Put a ball of mung beans in the center and seal the dough around it.  It doesn't have to be a tight fit.  Set aside on a plate or baking sheet.  When you run out of filling, roll the remaining dough into little balls of a half inch or less.  They'll be like little gooey pearls.

When you have made all the balls, add them to the ginger syrup and bring to a low boil for 5 minutes.  Serve hot.

BÁNH CAM

Filling: While the batter is hydrating, cook the mung beans in water with a pinch of salt for 10 minutes. Drain.  Smash the beans and add sugar to taste.

Mochi: Wet your hands.  Roll 2 to 3 inch balls and flatten them to about 1/8 to 1/4 inch thick.  You may need to add more water to the dough to make it more elastic.  Put a ball of mung beans in the center and seal the dough around it.  It doesn't have to be a tight fit.  Roll in the sesame seeds.  

Fill a deep fryer or a pot with coconut oil and turn on medium high.  drop in some of the mochi pearls to test temperature.  Fry the mochi in batches until deep golden (whence the name orange cake).  Scoop out and cool on a napkin-lined plate.  Eat when cooled to a bearable temperature.

* * * * * * *
So many ways to eat mochi...

munching on mochi

Mochichichi Mochichi.

Oh so Soft and Cuddly!
Happy, happy Mochichi.
I love you, Mochichi!

Ăn Ngon Lành|Eat Delectably!

*I've recently watched Dr. Robert Lustig's TEDx talk where he lists the 56 names of sugar.  While coconut palm sugar was not one of the named and has a lower glycemic index, it still is a refined sugar though a better choice than cane sugar.  For a no refined sugar approach, I suggest a fruit syrup.

Bánh Chưng | Earth cake for Lunar New Year

Bánh Chưng is a traditional Việt dish for Tết | the Lunar New Year.  Back in the nascent days of Việt Nam's tribal past, legend has it that after defeating the Shang dynasty incursion, the 6th Hùng Vương king (ca. 2300 BC) decided to choose his successor among his sons by a cooking contest; yes, a prehistoric Top Chef competition with the winner being crowned king.  Primogeniture had no valency in pre-Sinic Van Lang; patrilineal confucianism came later.  The winningest son who was 18th in birth order and poor to boot was visited by a nữ tiên | a goddess who advised him to use the simple ingredients of the people, wrap it in banana leaves and boil it.  So he chose gạo nếp | glutinous rice, đậu xanh | mung beans, and pork, shaped it vuông vuông | square creating Bánh Chưng which in ancient Việt cosmology represents the earth.  He also made bánh dày | mochi in the round to represent Heaven.  I know that seems puzzling to imagine the earth as square and Heaven round.

Flying over north VN

Bear with me here as I diverge through my anti-halcyon grad school years.  I took a seminar on the Sacred Feminine in Southeast Asia with Dr. Ashley Thompson who kept emphasizing that there were Indic yonis & lingam all over Southeast Asia including VN which utterly befuddled me at the time (how is a square pedestal a yoni?).  And I finally puzzled out the connection between cosmic geometry and everyday objects; on the geographic level, a rice paddy is roughly square in shape when on level land, a metonymic connection to earth; on the symbolic/metaphoric level, a square set on its corner, is a diamond or rhombus, the universal symbol of the yoni.  Now, thanks to Ashley and the Sacred Feminine (sounds like a great band name) my secret sixth sense to wit is: (sigh) I. See. Yonis. Everywhere. (I'm talking about you, Crystal Vulva Cathedral) which is a damn sight better than seeing lingam everywhere let me tell you.

Linga-Yoni at the Cát Tiên sanctuary,
Lâm Đồng province, Vietnam

To the indigenous Việt cosmology, the vault of heaven is encircles the earth.  Hence  bánh dày | mochi in the round.  (I said, "She was more like a beauty queen from a movie screen.  Dont mind but what do you mean I am the one Who will dance on the floor in the round?")

Aside: bánh tét is a related dish which was purportedly derived during the Nam tiến | the Southern expansion period (17th C VN's version of Manifest Destiny conquest).  It can have the same savory ingredients as Bánh Chưng or alternately contain a sweet mixture of sticky rice & banana.  Significantly enough the Southern region in VN retains more Indic cultural influence via the conquest of Cham & Khmer kingdoms (and more Sinic influence via the Ming dynasty refugees who settled the area).  It is unsurprising that the cylindrical shape should therefore represent the linga, completing the cosmic dialectic.  (Oh, and thanks internet for showing me that I am not the only one to make this connection so you can stop looking at me like I am prurient, all you Việt Kiều.)

biggest Linga and Yoni in Southeast Asia

During my childhood, Ông Bà Ngoại |my maternal grandparents and Ông ngoai in particular would make dozens and dozens of Bánh Chưng the week before Tết.  Ông Ngoại would set the banana leaves in a frame and skillfully wrap dozens of Bánh Chưng (Ohio St, Auburn Dr, 54th).  Then he'd light a small bonfire in the backyard and boil them in a clean galvanized steel trash can.  The cooked Bánh Chưng would be distributed among the Phamily and the community.

I have been wanting to make Bánh Chưng ever since I became a mother to continue the tradition; and once my grandparents' passed, as a part of their legacy, but life got in the way and I was daunted.  This year with my ascending energy, I gave it a go though it was a few weeks after Tết.  I kinda winged it, loosely referring to some instructions I wrote down from my mom and Bach Ngo's cookbook, using what ingredients I had: pork belly instead of shoulder (too fatty, not enough meat), no shallots (hard to source organic ones).  I didn't hull the mung beans because it just seemed like a lot of work and anyway it's just more fiber; I didn't precook them either because of the time and not wanting to cook all the nutrients out.  I struggled with wrapping (darn banana leaves kept splitting when I was wrapping it and my corners were not tight so there was some water that got in).  Then I posted my results on Facebook and got lots of feedback from my aunty Len and my mama (who I let weigh in this post with her advice).  I suggest looking up youtube tutorials on wrapping as I haven't mastered this.  The one drawback is the ones from Việt Nam use fresh banana leaves that have a different texture & length than the ones we can source here.  Frozen banana leaves can be found in an Asian or Latino market (especially the Caribbean ones) and occasionally I've seen fresh banana leaves.

Bánh Chưng

makes three 9x9 inch "cakes"

• 10 cups of organic, sprouted glutinous brown rice (alternately called sticky rice, sweet rice, mochi rice)
• 1 lb organic sprouted mung beans
• banana leaves washed & dried and then blanched
• optional 8 shallots
• 1/4 c. Red Boat fish sauce
• Celtic or grey salt
• 1/5 tsp freshly ground black pepper
• 2-1/2 lbs of sustainably raised pork shoulder or ham, cut into 2 inch cubes
• coconut palm sugar
• optional coconut milk (full fat kind, not the dairy alternative kind)
• cotton kitchen twine
• 24 qt stockpot or pressure cooker
• Bragg's amino acids or Coconut secret amino acids
• lard or coconut oil

RICE RICE BABY 

Soak rice & mung beans separately overnight in filtered water.  Drain the water separately (can be composted).  You may proceed with the recipe from this step or to boost the nutritional value, sprout the grains by  and rinse 1-2 times a day for 2-3 days until the germ sprouts a little tail.

Pulverize shallots, fish sauce, salt & pepper in a food processor, mortar & pestle or with a hand blender.  Add to the pork and marinade for several hours or overnight.

If you do plan on cooking the mung beans, boil them for 10 minutes.

Mama Says: 

cook bean , add salt while cook, add sugar after cook, smashed the cooked bean, add little coconut milk, form to the same size of banh chung, 1" thick, if you want savory, add fried onion, pepper. 

cook sweet rice halfway in batch with salt, this way easy to roll. 

I didn't bother seasoning the beans or parboiling the rice.  Extra steps but my result was plainer so I'd add shallots, more fish sauce & salt next time.

REFUGEE EDUCATION #1 Ba-Na-Na

Wash and dry banana leaves.  The frozen kind are softer than the fresh kind.  According to my mama: "Deep [dip] banana leave in the boiled water To soften it and also sterile the leave, dry the leave both side with paper towel." [2/1/2015 note: Mom also says use banana leaves from Thailand, not the Philippines and to cut off the rib for pliability.]

A traditional khuôn | mold for Bánh Chưng is a square frame with a an interior box like a springform pan.  You can use a 9x9 baking dish as the mold as I did, make a wood one, or DIY one from cardboard as my mama does.  

Mama says: 

use the cardboard cut a long strip and make it to square box, tape it at the one corner to make the mold,1st layer one piece of leave 15" long, 2nd layer 4 pieces of leave center overlap on top the 1st layer, the outside of leave it outside . put the square box on top of the leave not straight side (xeo xeo) tear two strips of banana leave, the width same size of one side of the box, put banana strip crisscross inside the square box, put cooked rice on top the banana strip, pat the rice to make it solid at the base, put cooked bean & meat or what ever!!!,top with another layer of cooked rice pat it down. fold the banana strips to make the square, pull the cardboard out now you already have one small square banh chung, now just fold the outside banana leave, just like gift wrap. tight with string. cook with boiled water for 2.5 hrs it done.

I boiled in a pressure cooker for 3 hours since brown glutinous rice takes longer to cook than white glutinous rice.  Since my pressure cooker is small, I could only fit 1 Bánh Chưng at a time so this was a 3 day cooking process!  (Still not as bad as the time I decided to make a 10-course dinner for my 30th birthday which entailed a 5 page workplan, a week of prep, 10 lbs of pork, and 3 or 4 days of cooking and borrowing a friend's oven for the second roast.  Oh and kalua pork juices charred in the ovens, the nước mấm spilled all over my then-boyfriend, now husband's car causing him to ban kalua pork and fish sauce for a while.  I of course got drunk in relief and exhaustion at the party and ate not much of it.  I don't do such crazy things no more.)

To serve, unwrap the banana leaves.  Slice into wedges if eating so fresh and so warm warm.  The days after, it's customary to fry it so you'll want to slice them for even coverage.  I use a little lard or coconut oil and fry in my All Clad skillet or my enamel coated cast iron.  My aunty Len uses her panini griddle to make the perfectly toasted Bánh Chưng with wedges.

Fried.  Obviously too hungry to do pretty staging & lighting.

It is traditionally eaten with pickled leeks and soy sauce (there's a memory in there somewhere about pickled leeks, Jacqui and Auburn Dr.).  I use Bragg's or when I'm really avoiding soy, coconut aminos or celtic salt.  The Southern way of eating it is with a little sugar.  My stepdad and husband who both hail from the Mekong delta do this and I could never really get into it.

Cooked Bánh Chưng can be frozen and resteamed. Leave it in its banana glory and slip into a freezer bag.  

Tutorials on wrapping and molds:

• Gói bánh chưng bằng khuôn thông minh
• khuôn bánh chưng | earth cake frame tutorial here

Ăn Ngon Lành|Eat Delectably!

Sticky brown rice mochi recipe testing

mo·chi

/ˈmōCHē/

a short-grained, sweet, glutinous rice cake with a high starch content, used in Japanese cooking. 

While mochi appears to have been been mainstreamed as a delectable pastel ice cream treat to be had at a sushi restaurant, as a foodway it is actually widespread in Asia with different vocabulary natch, as a sweet morsel filled with beans or seeds and usually connected with traditional celebrations.  Mochi is made from glutinous or sticky rice and symbolizes "good times" in a nutshell.  My MIL makes chè trôi nước--a sweet mung bean stuffed mochi served in ginger syrup for birthdays.  That's party mochi; I have in mind a plain, everyday, savory mochi.

One of my all-time favorite snacks is bánh dầy chả lụa--little rice cakes shaped as the sky according to Viet legend brushed in oil and sandwiched around steamed silky pork sausage and wrapped in banana leaves.  Whenever we were near a Viet deli/bakery, I always grabbed 1-2 for the road.  Since I've stopped eating MSG, I've stopped eating at Vietnamese food places, because inevitably there is MSG in everything especially chả lụa.  I haven't taken my MIL's offer up to teach me how to make chả lụa yet.  Though with a quarter hog in my freezer, I think I ought to calendar that in.

So I was a kid's birthday party this weekend that had the traditional Korean tteok | mochi which was made with brown sticky rice and coated with brown rice powder, some with a sweet sesame seed center.  And I happily ate like a half-dozen after reading the ingredients and making an allowance for sugar (in any case, this was tuned to Asian tastebuds and was not very sweet at all).  My daughter VL got a few too since she couldn't partake of birthday cake.  We took some of the leftovers home and it struck me that it would make a great lunch for VL for school especially since she starts extended kindergarten hours next week.  I scoured the internet which had lots of white sticky rice recipes. lots of traditionally-made-by-pounding recipes, and surprisingly, a lot of microwave recipes.  I finally found this wholesome, macrobiotic brown rice mochi recipe by Jill Ettinger (Organic Authority) which is food processed, steamed, and baked.

So, embarking on my maiden voyage into mochi making.  Here are my testing notes & tweaks. 

Soak the dry rice in water for several hours or overnight. Drain off excess water.

Captain's log.  Stardate 22.10.2013.  I soaked the organic sweet brown rice that I sourced from Azure Standard overnight in my sprout jar.  I think I'll try sprouting the sticky rice grains at some point to maximize the nutrient content (remove phytic acid & arsenic contamination), but this requires planning 2-3 days in advance...

In a strong food processor or blender, process the rice until it makes a smooth, creamy paste.

Mochi dough

Maybe my Kitchenaid is not high powered enough or I drained the rice of too much water or the recipe forgot water.  All I got was crumbly.  So I slowly added 2 tbs of water and it promptly balled up and was more doughlike than paste.  Then I had to take a break and go pick up my daughter from school.  When I came back, I remembered the salt (which is a forgotten step on the recipe) and added it and it all crumbled apart again (probably the water was absorbed into the rice and it dried out).  So I added another 2 tbs of water to get it to ball up.  I suppose I could have added more water to get it to paste consistency, but I liked the easier removal and clean up of the dough.  Sticky rice paste on blades is a P.I.T.A.  But thick dough means a denser mochi so I may try more water next time to achieve a looser consistency and allow the dough time to rest and soak up the moisture.  I'll have to experiment more and see...

Pour the mixture into a bowl or small pot you can steam with in a double boiler (you can also use a pressure cooker for about ten minutes). The rice should steam about 30 minutes or until the mixture gets glutinous and sticky. It should also appear somewhat glossy.

Steamed mochi dough

I started the water boiling in my pressure cooker with the rack and steamer tray inside while I scraped (not poured) the dough and crumbs into a round pyrex container powder-coated with generous amounts of tapioca starch.  To smooth it out, I lightly dusted my hands and the dough with starch to prevent sticking. The starching is where Jill's mochi recipe departs from bánh giầy which is formed into balls, oiled, and steamed on little individual squares of oiled banana leaves.

I set the pyrex in the pressure cooker which was boiling by this time and steamed for 10 minutes.  When the timer went off, I released the steam and voila.  I love my pressure cooker!  Mochi in 20 minutes from grinding to steaming.  The mochi is ready to eat at this point IMO with powdering or oiling.

On a tray dusted with the starch, pour the hot mochi mixture as evenly as possible, about ½ inch in thickness. Let cool before putting in the refrigerator for at least two hours. If you want to make round mochi, you'll need to work with the very sticky dough to form the balls, which is time consuming and worth mentioning again: very sticky.

Mochi ready to bake

This is an extra step compared to bánh giầy, but I decided to give it a go and see what happens.  I heated up my oven and since there was a pizza stone inside it from our recent pizza night with Pamela's GF mix (found at a steal $2 at GrocOut), I decided to bake on it with parchment paper rather then swap out.  I moved the dough over to a powdered 7.5 x 5.5 " pyrex container.  It's an extra step and extra dish to wash, but the round pyrex ends up moistened from the steam and not useful for this next task since I wanted even squares.  I  coated a butter knife with starch to make the cutting easier.  Then lifted the squares out and baked them on the aforementioned pizza stone & parchment paper

Puffed up baked mochi!

Mochi "beignet"!

The extra application of dry heat makes the mochi puff up and the outside crisp.  They resembled nothing so much as mochi beignets though the taste is gooey rice goodness!

We didn't have anything but deli roast beef on hand so that's how we did.  We found the mochi a bit too plain so I'm tweaked my amounts to up the gray sea salt (since it is milder than table salt).

I'll work on a  modified bánh dầy recipe forthcoming...

Ăn Ngon Lành|Eat Delectably!

Baked mochi ready to eat

This little piggy had baked mochi & roast beef.  Nyum!