LogFAQs > #970015853

A

You put together two teaspoons of grated garlic, two tablespoons of honey and one tablespoon of sake with 50 grams of miso. You boil pork belly meat in a pot, gradually adding water over a 30 minute period. Then you throw the pork and the garlic-honey mix into a plastic container to season it. Normally, you'd pickle the meat, but that requires having it sit overnight. This will just be a garlic-honey glazed pork belly version.

After the seasoning settles in a bit, you quickly grill up the pork belly and then cut it nice and thin. As for Raven, she's mixing the cheese cubes with the shio kombu blend. Then the two of you both wet your hands with the salt water and start molding rice around the fillings.

"The technique is not to make actual rice balls," you say. "Instead of rolling your hands like with Play-Doh, you instead cup your hands. They'll end up somewhere between a triangle and an oval, but that's the goal. It allows them to sit up on a plate, or in packaging for store bought o-nigiri."

Raven nods as she puts the rice around the cheese and shio kombu. She gets the hang of the triangular shape and has a good layer around all sides of the filling. You help her cut a bit of nori to attach to the rice ball, and that's the first couple of o-nigiri.

"Good work," you say before giving Raven a little kiss on the forehead.

"Thank you," Raven says with a soft smile. "So do you want me to help with the chicken one?"

"Well, yes, we can divide and conquer that," you say. "You can make one mix while I make the other. You take a quarter teaspoon of salt, a quarter teaspoon of black pepper, and a whole teaspoon of sake. After that, finely chop up the spring onions."

"Okay," she says.

While Raven sets to work on that, you put a half teaspoon each of grated ginger, chicken bouillon and sugar, as well as a half tablespoon each of sesame oil, sake, and white sesame seed powder all together into a bigger mix. Then you remove the tendons from the chicken breasts and perforate with a fork.

"You got the mix?" you ask Raven.

"Yes," she says as she hands it over.

"Very good. We'll take these heat resistant bowls, and while I rub the chicken with the salt-pepper mix, you take this blend I made and mix it with the onions."

"Okay," she says again.

You rub the chicken down, she blends the onions with the ginger mix, and you wrap the chicken up.

"Microwave that for 90 seconds on the default setting," you tell Raven. "I'll heat this up for three minutes on a gentler setting."

Raven nods and heats the ginger onions. In the wait, you mold another pork belly o-nigiri and set it with the others. The 90 seconds are up, you put the chicken in and change the heat setting before getting it going. In those three minutes, Raven makes more cheese rice balls while you make more pork rice balls. That's seven total by the time the chicken is done heating.

Once the chicken cools down enough, you break the meat up by hand, throw it together with the onions, and do a quick taste test.

"Alright, that's good," you say. "Let's mold some rice balls."

The two of you wet your hands again, mold the rice around the negishiodare, and have your first two chicken-and-onion o-nigiri. After that, it's all about rotating through the three flavors until all the ingredients are used up.

"There's still some rice left over," Raven says as she looks in the pot. "Anything you can do with that?"

"Not something that'd be enough for everyone," you say. "Unless... No, this isn't the right kind of rice for making mochi."

"What? You can't pull some kind of food alchemy?" Raven teases with a smirk.

"Not unless you want mochi that tastes like asparagus," you say.

"Oh, like it'd go that badly," she says. "C'mon, we can give it a try together. Christmas mochi for dessert."

A) Give it a try
B) Pass on experimenting