Mochi from the popular GOMAJI in Hualien.
We arrived at 07:30 to this tiny side street house in Hualien, walked in the front door and down a hallway where a long line of customers were already waiting!
Inside the kitchen of this house, many hands were at work moulding mochi around either red bean paste, sesame powder, or peanut powder.
There’s just something about sticky, chewy rice flour mixed with water, filled with something that little bit sweet. I can’t quite describe it, but just like us English pair a biscuit or scone with a cup of hot milk tea, I can totally see how Japanese (traditionally, of course) can sit down with some mochi and a hot cup of green/mocha tea.
Moulded expertly around a perfect amount of filling (in this case, red bean), mochi is the perfect afternoon tea accompaniment.
Additionally, how cute are these boxes? Priced at $120 ($100 for the mochi and $20 for the box), it’s a bloody steal! Each individual mochi is $10 – unreal!
Be prepared to get the best texture and the best flavour of the mochi on the day you buy. It’s recommended to finish the box within 3 days, and I can testify that the longer you leave it, the harder the texture becomes.
Peanut anything just floats my boat. So peanut powder inside this perfect mochi hit the spot. But, also, the sesame powder was awesome, too!
The red bean flavour was good, too, but not quite as palatable to me as the sesame and peanut both were.
This, as well as these incredible 剝皮辣椒 will go down in my phone as must-buys every time I go to Hualien.