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.

Chè bắp hột ngăm vôi | Nixtamal & tapioca pudding

Native corn harvest

What follows is a recipe for chè bắp | a sweet corn pudding made with tapioca pearls and coconut milk.  In order to make this a more nutritious dish, I will use corn kernels made from organic, heirloom native corn grown in my front yard and nixtamalized (alkalinized to be digestible and maximize its nutrients, very similar to hominy).  I hardly know how to write this recipe without getting into childhood memories, cultural foodways, and contemporary life.  So here goes:

Maize Foodways

While in current times, corn is so ubiquitous it can be invisible in American foods (about which Michael Pollan has tried to raise awareness), and worldwide, corn is one of the top 3 cereals/grains produced, its globalization, genetic modification, and industrial agricultural practices have combined to make corn a sugar-dense, nutritionally empty frankenfood.  But rather than dismiss corn altogether, it behooves us to remember its history and cultural practices in its consumption.  Before the current popularity of quinoa, chia, goji, maize was one of the original globalized "superfoods."  Cultivated in Central America over 7,000 years ago maize sustainined major civilizations from the Olmec, Aztec, Maya, Inca, Iroquois, Navaho, and Zuni.  In the 15th Century, colonization and the Columbian Exchange spread maize to all corners of the earth.

While superfoods are great at introducing new foods to our omnivorous diets, they come with the serious problem of being stripped of their cultural foodways & context.  When corn was globalized during the colonization era (aka "Enlightenment"), the cultural foodways of nixtamalization--storing/cooking it with ash or slaked lime/calcium carbonate to unlock its nutritional value--were not brought with it, which means that untreated corn is largely indigestible. Hence when you eat whole corn kernels, the kernel is visible almost whole as the end product of digestion to put it politely (for the impolite, this means corn poop). 

Nixtamalization. . . The alkaline steeping and wet milling of corn for table use remain distinctly American practices. Although corn has spread across the globe, the preparation of nixtamal and hominy has stayed in the Americas.  "Beautiful Corn: America’s Original Grain from Seed to Plate," by Anthony Boutard

Native corn in my front yard

When maize was introduced as a new crop staple in Africa and Europe 500 years ago supplanting native grains and tubers, the eating of it caused widespread pellagra.  While we'd think in this day and age, we'd have figured out that corn needs to be nixtamalized to be a nutritious staple grain, even still there is a "disease" called kwashiokor in South Africa which only afflicts children who have weaned and eat mostly corn-based food and low protein.  It still befuddles me that the practice of alkalizing maize to make it digestible and nutritious has not been exported to countries where corn has become a staple and thereby prevent widespread famine and nutritional deficiency rather than band aid solutions like niacin fortification after the fact.

Aside: Kinda makes you think about the recent waves of globalized foods and what missing/lost/forgotten foodways may affect its consumption.  For example the practice of sprouting grains and seeds to counteract the anti-nutrients and maximize their nutritional value has largely been lost through industrialization. Get on that UNESCO.

Me and Mrs. Corn, Mrs. Corn, Mrs. Corn

we got a thiiiiiing goin' on.

In Việt Nam, where corn now is the second most important crop after rice, corn is mainly a snack food; corn is eaten untreated on the cob or in chè bắp, and surprisingly, as nixtamal mixed with sweet rice & mung bean (xôi bắp).  I'm not sure when the nixtamalization was introduced and why it is in a delimited way.

I have very fond memories of chè bắp | corn coconut pudding in my childhood.  My ông bà | grandparents grew multi-colored native corn in Việt Nam which was introduced via China tradeways during the Ming Dynasty from the Columbian Exchange over five hundred years ago (sorry Mac from Night Court, corn was not an American introduction) and one of the treats they would make after harvesting is chè bắp.  Stateside, mom would buy sweet corn on the cob and shave off the kernels.  She'd simmer the kernels and the cobs together with sugar for what felt like forever til cooked.  Then she'd remove the cobs and add coconut milk to the kernels, garnishing with toasted sesame seeds.  We 3 kids would fight over who got to gnaw the sweet nubs left on the cobs.  One year when I was 10, I received a small packet of popcorn seeds as something like a cracker jack prize.  We were living with my ông bà ngoại|maternal grandparents, two of my aunties, one cousine, and three uncles that year on Auburn Dr. (I am horrible with dates and had a nomadic childhood, so I mark time by where I lived at the time); we three siblings and mom shared futon mattresses in the living room.  I gave the seeds to my  bà ngoại who along with my ông ngoại had transformed the backyard and the part of the publicly owned hill behind it into a terraced subsistence garden (this is before hipsters mainstreamed urban and guerilla gardening, back when it was denigrated, still illegal and mainly done by people of color, refugees, and immigrants).  My bà ngoại stuck the 3 seeds in a small strip of dirt along the front fence.  I was amazed to watch them sprout.  I don't remember if we ate them but if ông bà ngoại had to stretch the meager ears among 12 people, most likely she made chè bắp.

The girls playing in the husks at the Ardenwood Harvest Festival.

Cut forward 20 + years later to 2012, my family had a playdate with 2 other families at the Harvest Festival in Ardenwood to harvest heirloon, organic native corn.  The refugee/immigrants in us took over and we harvested a grip of native corn ears.  We didn't have a plan or idea of what to do with our booty.  So all the corn languished for a year.  I finally dragged the ears out to an impromptu corn shucking & milling bee at my homesteading girlfriend's house (there is a cosmic reason why shuck rhymes with a curse word and that's because it is brutal on your fingers to shuck dried corn on the cob.  Christina is a good friend).  I used the corn flour to make some delicious violet cornbread.   I reserved a few pounds with the idea of making hominy and a big pot o' pozole which never happened.

My corn rows

Last summer I was still recovering from adrenal fatigue burnout and I felt my energy coming back. I impulsively dug a guerilla garden in our southern-facing front lawn.  Boxed in by the Niles foothills with little tree cover, our southern-facing front yard caught the brunt of the summer sun and was scorching.  So I chose heat-loving heritage crops--watermelons and native corn, and unlike my meticulous husband, I forwent any planning or consideration of soil or knowledge/experience of gardening and dug holes in the previously green lawn.  I forwent any fancy germination, reasoning that putting seeds in the soil is an age-old practice of growing things.  I dug holes,  dropped in a few kernels of my native corn leftovers and a scoop of compost, worm casings.  Later I decided to adopt the Three Sisters model of growing corn to little success (squash did well until it frosted, legumes were way overshadowed).  In spite of me, my corn really thrived.  Losing steam, I didn't harvest it at the peak of ripeness to try eating it on the cob, instead letting it dry for milling and nixtamal/hominy.

Dried & shucked corn kernels

This week my daughter VL's kindergarten class learned about corn;  they learned how to hand grind nixtamal with a metate to make masa, and learned how to hand make tortillas.   I volunteered some beautiful cobs, kernels for planting, and Chè bắp for the potluck Corn Feast.

Gorgeous dried native corn cobs

My contribution will be a more nutritious twist on my childhood favorite--chè bắp using nixtamalized native corn using the method I found from Mother Earth News.  I botched the nixtamal the first time around, but fortunately native corn is forgiving (so not being ironic or apocryphal here) so I did a second round and achieved the right texture.

Nixtamal

The many names of CaO2: 
calcium hydroxide, slaked lime,
pickling lime, builder's lime,
vôi (Việt), choona (South Asia),
cal (Latin America).  Used in
 cooking, chews, gardening, 
and making houses.

This needs to be made in advance of the chè by a couple of days.

Ingredients:

• 1.5 lbs of dried corn
• 25 g of pickling lime (2 tbs)
• water

Put corn kernels & pickling lime in a stainless steel or enamel pot.  Add enough water to cover by two inches.  Simmer on the stove without a lid for 30 minutes to alkalinize the kernels.  Do not boil.  Remove from heat.  Cover with lid and allow to soak overnight.

Simmering in slaked lime

I was making dinner at the same time and ignored the covered pot and when the 30 min was up, I notice it was at a low boil.  Yikes. I left it overnight and went on to the next step of cooking but it was still hard, so I repeated the pickling lime simmering without a lid for another 30 min.  Native corn is coarser than sweet corn so it probably needs more than 30 min to alkalinize.

Pour off the lime mixture into the garden or compost.  Rinse kernels well.   Put into steel pot, cover with one inch of water and simmer for 40-60 minutes to soften.   Salt the water and allow to cool.  Makes about 3 lbs of nixtamal. 

Comparison of dried kernels and nixtamal

Chè bắp hột ngăm vôi | Nixtamal & tapioca pudding

Frozen coconut milk, no additives

Ingredients:

• 1 lb nixtamal
• 1/2 cup small tapioca pearls
• 1/3-3/4 c palm sugar or coconut palm sugar to taste or fruit syrup*
• 16 oz of coconut milk (recipe here)**

Rinse tapioca pearls.  Soak tapioca pearls in cold water for 20 min.

Boil a pot of water.  When it is boiling add tapioca while stirring constantly so they separate and they don't stick to the bottom of the pan and scorch.  Lower the heat and cook until the pearls are mostly translucent.  Add nixtamal and coconut sugar and simmer for until the pearls are translucent.  The coconut sugar will give this a nice caramel color.  Turn off the heat and add coconut milk. 

*I've recently watched Dr. Robert Lustig's TED 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.


**Tropical Traditions recipe for making your own coconut milk here. If you are using frozen,give the package a quick rinse before opening to remove any residue, dirt, etc.

Ăn cho Ngon Lành|Eat Delectably!