My sister Jen sent me a mochi ice cream recipe recently; it seemed relatively simple, so I picked up some rice flour and green tea ice cream, and set out to make the mochi to end all mochis. As it turns out, I’ve got zero aptitude for this culinary endeavor.
The first part of the recipe was making the dough. That was easy enough.
Here’s where it got difficult. These are the actual instructions:
- Place plastic wrap over a cutting board. Dust generously with corn flour (this is a must).
- Wait for dough to cool. Place onto board and divide into 10 pieces.
- Flatten dough with your palm.
- Wrap each piece of dough around an ice cream ball and refreeze in an airtight container.
Here’s how the instructions SHOULD have read:
1. “Hahaha, even though you dusted the cutting board with corn flour, the dough will still stick! Try to solve problem by throwing even more corn flour on dough. Keep doing this until you form a sticky ball of dough/corn flour goop.”
2. “The dough will not divide into 10 pieces. Instead, it will divide all over your hand.”
3. “Abandon plan to flatten dough with palm. Place wax paper over dough and pound with meat mallet. Momentarily bask in your brilliance. Then lament your stupidity after realizing the wax paper and dough are stuck together. Swear profusely.”
4) “Place scoops of green tea ice cream in middle of misshapen, bizarro dough. Wrap dough around ice cream. Discover dough pieces are much too small and watch ice cream ooze out the sides. Look on in horror as ice cream begins to melt. Recommence profanity.”
The final step:
5) “Give up. You’re hopeless.”
June 26th, 2008 at 12:47 am
Ok, I can see I will now need to FedEx you mochi from Porter Exchange. That looked like quite the debacle. There must be some place you can get a mochi-making apprenticeship in NY, right? Iron Chef Morimoto? Nobu??
June 26th, 2008 at 8:18 am
It was ridiculous. Not only was the dough impossible to handle, but I made the big mistake of scooping out all 10 scoops of ice cream at once, instead of it doing it one at a time. Melted ice cream everywhere! I’m calling Morimoto for help.