I've been on some kind of "wa" (japanese) kick these days. For some reason I want to eat mochi or a Japanese type of sweet. Maybe it was my success making these, but today I wanted to try something a little different. Yomogi mochi. Yomogi is mugwort, the Japanese word sounds much nicer than the English translation. Yomogi is actually a weed (no, I don't think you can smoke it), and you can often find it amongst other weeds outside. Sometimes yomogi mochi is also called kusamochi (literally weed rice cake).
I bought the yomogi dried. You have to reconstitute it in hot water to get it to the consistency to use for mochi making.
I followed the daifuku recipe which I posted previously and added the reconstituted yomogi after cooking the mochi for 4 minutes in the micro. I then put a dollop of koshian in the middle and sealed them up.The mochi was so soft and the sweetness from the koshian was just enough. I think next week I'll make a western version mochi. Stay tuned!
