November 19, 2010
きりたんほ
To break up the monotony of the long bus ride across Iwate we stopped in at a workshop for some hands-on kiritanbo-making and souvenir shopping. To make kiritanbo, first mash the cooked rice to extract the starch and make it stick together, but still retain some shape of the grains without totally bashing it into mochi.
The grandmas stayed on the bus with the napping kid. Wife's aunt did come along so we had somebody with actual cooking experience to help. Formed the mashed rice onto a thick dowel before grilling on the hibachi. Brushed periodically with a spicy miso sauce to add some zing to the plain rice and to help form a crispy, charred crust. One can also remove the crisped rice roll from the dowel and cut it into pieces to enrich soups and nabes, and we had it a couple more times in our subsequent meals.
