Making Mochi--It’s a Goo Thing : Centuries-Old Japanese Custom of Fashioning Balls of Rice Is Tricky, and Sticky, Business

In an effort to bring good luck for the New Year and teach the next generation a centuries-old Japanese tradition, hundreds gathered Sunday at a strawberry farm to learn the fine culinary art of mochi making.

Making these sticky balls of crushed rice is tricky business. And Glenn Tanaka, president of the Orange Coast Optimist Club, which sponsored the event, said that its goal is to resurrect the New Year’s custom.

“It’s supposed to be good luck to start the New Year off right,” Tanaka said.

For Sunday’s mochi assembly line, more than 100 pounds of rice were soaked in lined trash cans overnight. The rice is steamed over a fire, kneaded and then pounded into a paste.

Small bits are pinched off from the final product--a doughy glob--and then shaped into round cakes on a cornstarch-lined wood tray. The cakes are dipped in soy sauce and sugar or peanut butter if they are eaten right away, or frozen to eat on New Year’s Day.

“We want some rice!” yelled 9-year-old Rukka Suzuki from Fountain Valley, huddled around an empty granite bowl--called an usa--with her friends, all clutching hand-carved wooden mallets.

Holding fistfuls of hot rice, Jimmy Otsuka, 46, dashed from a bay of rice steamers over to the bowl and slammed down a sticky glob for some girls to mash.

“I remember being a kid and just loving this,” said Otsuka, who has vowed to keep the tradition of making mochi alive for the younger generation.

“Ugh. My stick’s stuck,” said Suzuki, her mallet embedded in the mound of rice. She took another whack at the rice and grimaced when a dab of the mochi flew off and hit her straight in the mouth.

“It’s an acquired taste,” said Arleen Kubo of Fountain Valley about the pucks of odorless paste.

“A lot of these young people don’t know how to do it,” said Otsuka’s mother, Stella. “If you pound it too much, it gets soft. If you add too much water, it gets gooey.”

This year, the kids had some extra help: automated mochi makers when they got tired and left to play basketball.

“They taste better when you make them by hand,” Stella Otsuka said. “You had to work for it.”