Coconut Onigiri

When my Sister Bip came to visit back in September, the last thing we did was to try two new desserts from Wagamama - the sweet onigiri and the mochi ice cream. Both turned out to be really tasty and I set about to try my hand at these beautiful and tasty delicacies from Japan. It took me a while to get all the ingredients, mainly because I kept forgetting to put them on my shopping list, but finally today I got my act together and made the onigiri.

Obviously Wagamama haven't published the recipe, but a quick search on coconut onigiri gave resulted in this recipe with instructions, which seemed to be on the right line. I made some minor adjustments and converted to metric amounts.

Ingredients

2.5 dl sushi rice
5 dl coconut milk drink
0.7 dl granulated sugar
3 tbsp maple syrup
1.25 dl dessicated coconut
white drinking chocolate (optional)

Instructions

1. Place the rice in a sieve and rinse well under running water.
2. Transfer the rice to a casserole dish, add the coconut milk drink, granulated sugar and maple syrup. Stir through and bring to a boil.
3. Put the lid on and let simmer gently for about 15 or so minutes, stirring occasionally.
4. Place the dessicated coconut in a pan and toast for a few minutes under constant stirring - some of the flakes should go golden brown. Once this happens, remove from the heat and set aside.
   
5. Once the time is up on the rice, turn off the heat and leave the rice to stand for a further 10 - 15 minutes. The liquid should have soaked into the rice and it should have the consistency of a thick porridge.
6. Transfer the rice to a bowl, add the toasted coconut and mix well.
7. Sprinkle white drinking chocolate on a large plate and also place some in a small bowl. Using latex gloves, form small balls from the rice, about the size of walnuts. Then roll these in the white chocolate in the bowl and place on the plate.
8. The chocolate will likely melt/soak in, so they'll end up just as sticky as before, however it adds a nice flavour to the onigiri.

Actually, talking through these with Lundulph we thought that dipping the onigiri in melted white chocolate would work nicely. This would mean we'd need to eat them cold of course. So far, we've whizzed a few in the microwave and had them warm, which is really nice and I'm not sure if cold would be as nice. Perhaps if I make them a little smaller.

Using ganache as a filling would probably also be quite nice and I'm trying to work out how to achieve the ones at Wagamama, which had been battered and deep fried very briefly, adding an extra crunch.

Update 2023-07-22: Sadly the original recipe inspiration seems to have disappeared, as have the lovely Wagamama onigiris from their menu. But when my good friend Doctor Cutie came to visit with her family this year, I decided to make these, since she can't eat gluten anymore. I also wasn't sure if the dessicated coconut and the coconut milk would be gluten free, so I skipped the former and swapped the latter for single cream and semiskimmed milk. Here is the tweaked recipe:

Ingredients

150 g sushi rice
4 dl single cream
2 dl semiskimmed milk
0.7 dl granulated sugar
4 tbsp maple syrup
white or ruby chocolate
whole lingonberries, fresh or frozen

Instructions

1. Soak the rice in cold water overnight, then drain and place in a deep saucepan.
2. Stir in the cream sugar and maple syrup and simmer until the rice is soft and starts going mushy, stirring occasionally and adding skimmed milk if it starts going dry.
3. Remove from the heat and leave to cool down completely.
4. Roll into small bite-sized balls, make a hole and put one lingonberry inside and close up carefully so as not to burst the berry.
5. Temper the chocolate, then dip each ball to cover well and leave to set. Store in an airtight container in the fridge.

I didn't decorate as I wasn't sure my decorations were gluten free, but there are loads of possibilities. The lingonberry gives just the right amount of tanginess to the very sweet rice. I suspect coating with white chocolate would make things even sweeter, the ruby chocolate has a bit of fruity tanginess to it, but worked very nicely too and our guests liked them too.