Onigiri For A Picnic By The Lake,Eating Rice Drenched In Tea And The Ever Trusty Kicap

I made some onigiri for us to take out and eat at the nearby Botanical Park (Taman Botani). Well if you can call a park 12km away near.

I only used three different furikake flavours for our onigiri this time; tamago (egg), ume (plum) and okaka (finely chopped katsuobushi dressed with soy sauce). For 2 and a half cups of calrose rice, I managed to get 16 small onigiri. I made small balls because I didn't want Raimie to eat half a ball and unable to finish them.

Literally, furikake means "to sprinkle over". Furikake is essentially of a mixture of seaweed, dried and ground fish, sesame seeds, soy sauce, sugar and salt and is used to add some flavour to the rice. Other ingredients can be salmon and egg, to name a few. The seasoning is used on hot rice and in onigiri.

This is how I make onigiri:

I always end up with lots of dirty dishes when making the rice balls. I put the rice already mixed with furikake in the mould (see triangle thingy I was holding in my palm) and press away to get the triangle shape. If I want to put some filling inside the onigiri, I put rice half full in the mould, then the filling and then some more rice and press.

Raimie ate 5 onigiris while I was making them, he was that excited. He would've eaten more but I asked him to wait and eat the rest when we get to the park.

The finished onigiri

Eating onigiri in the park. Zaini lamented on the fact there there wasn't any tsukemono (Japanese pickles) to accompany the onigiri. Something citric/spicy definitely go well with onigiri.

The picnic ended with this for a view, the Putrajaya Lake at dusk. Nice way to spend the evening, don't you agree?

Next week, we'll head to another park for another onigiri picnic, if the weather permits. I think I need to start making my own nukazuke for my two pickle loving boys. (And start making onigiri with fillings and not depend only on my stock of furikakes).

There's another dry Japanese condiment meant to be sprinkled on top of rice and that's instant Ochazuke. This simple Japanese dish is made by pouring green tea, dashi, or hot water over rice that's topped with other condiments.

I like things spicy so I always eat my ochazuke with lots of kimchi (so makes the dish a mix of Japanese and Korean). :)

Well, Korean has their version too; like this packet of instant rice seasoning.

We have one local seasoning for rice too, a very popular and some simply can't without this. What is it?
The always delicious kicap! (That's soy sauce for you - but our soy sauce is completely different from the Japanese one).

I once flew from KL to Tokyo with a bottle of kicap (with transit in Changi, Singapore) stashed away in my hand luggage (and this was when the liquid ban was newly enforced. Thank goodness me and the kicap made it safely to Tokyo and to the hand of a blogger friend there). :)