Onigiri or Japanese rice balls are commonly packed in bentos and are used as travelling food - these are basically shaped rice balls with fillings that you can tailor make however you wish. What could be more convenient than that? What's more, they are easy to prepare - cook some rice, add some filling and shape! To untrained hands however (like yours truly I must admit), the shaping part is probably the trickiest. Onigiri are traditionally shaped into a rounded triangular shape, tubular shapes and just into rice balls. Nowadays of course there are a myriad of shapes one can make depending on what you fancy with the many differently shaped moulds sold. I still remember that the first time I saw these cute rice balls was in a Japanese tv series years ago, "Love Generation" the highly popular series that starred Takuya Kimura and Takako Matsu. I think there was one scene when the lead actress was trying to impress the lead actor with some homemade onigiri which unfortunately were criticised by him for the odd shapes and sizes. Somehow, that scene stuck in my head, I was probably thinking along the lines of 'how hard can it be to shape some rice?"
I was wrong! True, if you have been doing this for a while, it should come naturally but I find sushi easier to shape than onigiri (sans moulds) - the vinegar in the sushi definitely helps the rice to hold its' shape better. Anyhow, it was still a fun process to make these, I think the trick is that you really should shape these while the rice is still pretty warm and don't forget the salt water which you dip your hands into to avoid the rice from sticking to your hands (instead of to each other). Rather much like making sushi where you dip your hands into hand vinegar while shaping the sushi. Apparently though, if you are skilled enough you don't even need the hand vinegar while making sushi if your hands are nimble and quick enough - unfortunately I am not going to be a sushi master anytime soon so hand vinegar it is.
Anyway, I digress. For part of today's feature, I used a simple filling of tuna flakes and cherry tomatoes for a nice hint of sweet tartness, does that sound a tad conflicting? Somehow, the tomatoes I bought today were just that, sweet and tart. I wrapped some of the onigiri with some toasted seaweed strips (nori) and although not perfectly shaped the taste was good. For the other part, I just used some dried wakame mix which was a savoury mix of wakame and tiny dried shrimp, good simple flavours with a traditional filling of umeboshi. If you want yours to be perfectly shaped, do get the moulds that are sold in most Japanese grocery stores.
