Whacking Mochi and Pounding for Luck

The mochi factories that people would go to had shut down, like Homemade Bakery where they were known for their mandu and mochi. Some of the smaller shops didn't have a social media account or announcement that was out to the public and they silently vanished from the streets. People started to realize with all of the places that had their treats vanishing they would have less choices and have to turn to making their own. Rather than coming to the counter and being asked “Manju” or “Mochi”, the sweets would have to be made with the family.

But it wasn’t anything mindblowing, but it was something that was soft textured and tasty when it was chewy fresh. The powder would coat the mouth and the memory would be part of growing up, so people could remember before there was supermarket packed bentos of mochi, but specialty ones that were picked from a nice selection window. It was the mochi of families, so it was part of the cooking from the past and stayed in the present without much movement and sort of went slowly as people would just wait for the new years time to come by for their own family time to make some mochi.

But Hawaii memories alone don't have texture; they don't coat the mouth, or fill the soul. As the silent vanishing of the old mochi and manju masters continued, the selection would become some sort of unknown as people would find out at the time of making mochi what would be or even what could be. The legacy of those closed factories didn't go away completely, but they certainly were no longer everyday knowledge of the people in Hawaii, especially with so many people moving away. It would have moved into the hands of the people who refused to let it go, with many of the recipes traveling to Japan and the North American continent. To keep the resilience alive, the families in Hawaii would have to make a decision to step into the heavy, humid steam and the starch, engaging in a tradition that hasn't changed in forever, and do it out on a local street. You can almost smell it before you see it—that thick, starchy mist that hangs in the humid island air. Let’s look into how it all starts with the simplest of elements, requiring a day of quiet preparation before the first fire is even lit.

The process begins in the very beginning of the morning before the sun even rises, the lights turn on in the home with everyone's rice that was brought the day or two before. And now its time to prepare a batch for the house itself. The rice is first taken out of the bag, so it can be washed and later on placed in large stock pots. It then is stored in an area and is filled with water until it is near the top, because the rice has to soak for a day, or two days. It then has a chance to take on the water as it soaks, because there are a lot of bugs. It is common to cover the pots with a meshed rice cloth that can also be strong enough to be used for steaming. They have to be soaked ahead of time so they don’t burn while steaming, which also helps prevent the rice from sticking. The reason people would make their own wooden boxes is because they just aren’t easy to find. It becomes apparent after asking families that have had theirs for 100 years. 

The following day the Mochi rice is placed into wooden containers with a smaller-pot and placed in wooden containers. There are then these “Wooden Boxes” that have slats from the bottom and the steam comes from the bottom. The boxes are placed one on top of another and have their own cooking times where the steam comes up from the bottom and the top box has a large lid on it to ensure the steaming process goes throughout the boxes. This is the part where it becomes steamed rice. 

It then moves to Wooden boxes. At the bottom of all the wooden boxes, there is a heating-source that is either a gas fire or a place that contains an old fashioned fire that heats up a pot that is continuously filled with hot-kettles of water to maintain the heat. The water is important as well, because back in the olden days people could tell from where the water was from where the rice cakes were being made as each valley had its own flavor of water. If the water gets cold the whole batch of steamed rice could be ruined, so its important that the water is boiling hot. The containers are made with wood, because the wood can contain a large amount of steaming heat, because the steam gets so hot it can burn someone who touches it, so people have to be careful once things get going. So this is where things require a bit more about the timing, because the top-boxes that are stacked get lifted up, meanwhile the bottom-box that is closest to the heat gets taken out to be pounded or ground. The one at the bottom is always the one thats taken to the next step of being processed. The newest box that has the soaked-rice that is on top of the meshed rice cloth (cheese cloth) goes in a box and as the newest one it gets stacked at the very top. 

So going back to the rice that was in the wooden box at the bottom it is taken to become pounded, or as most families did post-plantation was using a family-mochi grinding machine. Because after the rice is finished and steamed it is then either placed in a bowl to be pounded, grinded, and thoroughly made into a sticky looking rice paste. Using a machine, which is often a heated-debate, often comes into the picture, but most families actually do it this way. There is also the option to do it the old fashioned way as there are those who like hitting the mochi and whacking the gluten out of it until there are not any grains left. Sometimes for people who may not know too much about the spiritual side it's just good to give some food a good whack to relieve stress, have some fun, and just have an enjoyable experience of beating up rice. 

During the new years it is common to see families getting together and placing the rice on a large stone and hitting it with mallets. With either a mochi making machine the rice gets processed, or even more a more lively display of live mallet pounding, a mochi forming table covered in flour so it doesn't stick to the table itself, and then a packing table that has containers with parchment paper inside, sometimes if there is no lid there is aluminum foil placed on top of it. But, sometimes the mallets are replaced with the  rice-pushers for the mochi making machine. They look like a stick with a circular bottom made out of wood and left in the water to make sure the rice doesn’t stick. These pushers that have taken the place are mallets in this case and when people push down a batch of hot-steamed rice down the machine they are getting their good luck with each push, so it's important if there is no mallets that each person to get their good luck must use these wooden pushers to push it down the machine in order to engage in the mochi day making of the mochi. The metal part on the top takes in the rice and oftentimes is watered up to make it easy for the rice to go down, sometimes it sticks and rice-paddles are used, which are also wet, in order to make sure all the rice is not sticking on the machine.