Onigiri (Rice Balls) -- The Shape That Holds

Late February. I finished the galley corrections and sent them back. The book is now out of my hands, in the literal and metaphorical sense — it belongs to the publisher, to the printer, to the production process that will turn a manuscript into an object. The letting-go is difficult. The book is Fumiko. The book is me. The book is every morning of miso soup and every evening of writing and every Saturday of Japanese school and every visit to Sacramento and every chipped bowl and every recipe card and every tear that fell into the dashi and evaporated with the steam. Letting the book go to a publisher is letting Fumiko go to the world. The world may not deserve her. The world will have her anyway.

I made sakura mochi in anticipation of spring — the pink rice cakes wrapped in cherry blossom leaves, the harbinger, the food that says: winter is ending. Spring is coming. The leaves are still pickled from last year's batch. The mochi is soft and sweet and the leaf is salty and the combination is hope, edible hope, the kind you can hold in your hand and taste.

Miya turned six — wait, no. Miya is still five. She turns six in August. But she acts six. She reads at a second-grade level. She writes in both English and hiragana. She makes onigiri that hold their shape. She says "itadakimasu" without prompting. She is growing faster than I can track, the way shiso grows in June: visibly, daily, the growth almost aggressive in its insistence on becoming.

The blog has a new rhythm this year — I am writing about the book-writing process, about what it means to turn a grandmother's story into a public document, about the ethics and the grief and the responsibility of telling someone else's story when that someone else cannot consent because she is dead. The posts are philosophical and personal and the readers are engaged — the comment sections have become conversations, dozens of people sharing their own stories of grandmothers and food and the things we carry in our kitchens. The blog is no longer a monologue. The blog is a room where people gather and talk about food and grief. The blog is Fumiko's kitchen, digitized.

Miya’s onigiri hold their shape now — that small fact undoes me every time I think about it. I wrote an entire book about Fumiko’s hands and what they made, and here is my daughter, five years old, pressing rice into the same triangles without being asked. While the sakura mochi cooled on the counter and the book moved further from my hands and closer to the world, I pulled out the rice cooker and made onigiri, because it is the food that says: we are still here, we are still feeding each other, the kitchen is still running. This is the recipe — nothing complicated, nothing that requires explanation — just rice and salt and hands that remember what to do.

Onigiri (Rice Balls)

Prep Time: 15 min | Cook Time: 20 min | Total Time: 35 min | Servings: 8 onigiri

Ingredients

• 2 cups Japanese short-grain white rice
• 2 1/4 cups water
• 1 1/2 teaspoons kosher salt, divided, plus more for shaping
• 4 sheets nori (dried seaweed), each cut in half or into strips
• 1/2 cup pickled umeboshi plum paste, or 4 whole umeboshi, pitted and torn (optional filling)
• 1/3 cup canned tuna mixed with 1 1/2 teaspoons soy sauce and 1 teaspoon mayonnaise (optional filling)
• Small bowl of cold water with a pinch of salt, for shaping hands

Instructions

1. Rinse the rice. Place rice in a medium bowl and cover with cold water. Swirl gently and drain. Repeat 3—4 times until water runs mostly clear. Drain well.
2. Cook the rice. Combine rinsed rice and 2 1/4 cups water in a medium saucepan. Bring to a boil over medium-high heat, then immediately reduce heat to the lowest setting, cover tightly, and cook for 15 minutes. Remove from heat and let steam, covered, for 10 minutes. Do not lift the lid during cooking.
3. Season the rice. Transfer cooked rice to a wide bowl. Sprinkle with 1 teaspoon salt and fold gently with a rice paddle or wooden spoon to distribute evenly. Allow to cool until just comfortable to handle — warm but not scalding.
4. Prepare your hands. Wet both hands thoroughly with the salted water. This prevents sticking and seasons the outside of the onigiri.
5. Shape the onigiri. Scoop roughly 1/2 cup of rice into one palm. Press a small well in the center with your thumb and add a teaspoon of your chosen filling, if using. Fold the rice gently around the filling. Cup both hands into a “V” shape and press firmly, rotating the onigiri, to form a compact triangle. The rice should hold together without crumbling. Re-wet hands between each onigiri.
6. Wrap with nori. Press a strip or half-sheet of nori around the base of each triangle. Serve immediately for crisp nori, or wrap loosely and let rest 10 minutes for softer nori that melds with the rice.
7. Serve. Arrange on a platter and serve at room temperature. Onigiri are best eaten the day they are made. If storing, wrap individually in plastic wrap and keep at room temperature up to 4 hours, or refrigerate up to 1 day and bring back to room temperature before eating.

Nutrition (per serving)

Calories: 175 | Protein: 4g | Fat: 1g | Carbs: 37g | Fiber: 1g | Sodium: 310mg