Sunday 4 October 2015

onigirazu

Just after I wrote about chigiri pan or pull apart bread buns in my previous post, I came to know about onigirazu, another (not too new) food trend in Japan.



I was at the local bookstore browsing the shelves of cookbooks when the text "不用捏饭团" on a book spine caught my attention. The Chinese text means rice ball or "onigiri" that is made without having to shape or squeeze.





"Onigirazu" or "不用捏饭团" are basically rice balls made by wrapping layers of rice and fillings with a square sheet of seaweed into a parcel which is then sliced into half, just like a sandwich. Due to the square shape and wrapping method, onigirazu are more versatile than onigiri when it comes to the choices of the fillings. You can wrap it with ham, sausages, eggs (be it hard boiled, scrambled, sunny-side-ups), tuna, salmon, cheese, pork cutlets, salad greens, tomatoes, cucumbers, ladies fingers, etc, etc.



For my first attempt at making onigirazu, I wrapped them with Korean spicy stir-fried pork, egg and salad greens. I seasoned the rice with some sesame oil and salt to make it more flavourful. Everyone enjoyed this humble and delicious lunch especially my younger child who loves seaweed wrapped rice balls, be it onigiri, maki or kimbap, and now onigirazu ;)

If you are interested to give these rice sandwiches a try, you may want to refer to this article which provides a tutorial on how to go about making them. Have fun!



4 comments:

Kimmy said...

Hi HHB, these onigirazu look so tempting. Will look up the article.

Whisk & Gift said...

Dear Happy Home Baking,

First and foremost, we are a big fan of your blog! We love baking and your local recipes never once failed us :) I personally have baked the french almond cake at least 5 times and it always taste so good!

We are a team of local youth from NTU and SMU with similar passion for animal welfare and baking. This led to the founding of our brainchild -Whisk & Gift, a charity bake sale in which all proceeds will go to non-profit organisations. For our first event, we will be working in tandem with Oasis Second Chance Animal Shelter (http://www.oscas.sg/) (OSCAS). OSCAS currently is home to 106 dogs and since inception, has successfully rehomed 40 dogs.

We chose an animal shelter for the beneficiary because we understand that there is a pertinent lack of awareness of stray/abandoned animals in Singapore. We understand that support is needed to fund these shelters in their efforts to save them. And why not raise awareness of this issue while munching on a cupcake? That’s the cherry on top.

Our event will be a half day bake sale (tentatively 9th Jan 2016 at Gallery @ Scape) with more than 20 stalls selling a variety of baked goods ranging from shepherd’s pie, cupcakes, macarons to savoury pies. We will also have stalls that cater to animal owners, selling dog apparels and dog treats. All ingredients or costs will be covered by volunteers/bakers and all proceeds from the bake sale will go to OSCAS.

A big thank you if you’re still reading till this point, we apologise for bombarding you with so much information but we thought it would be nice to give a little background story first.

We are writing this to seek a partnership with you. We hope that you can join our event as one of the bakers. We believe your store presence will greatly aid us in the execution of the event. In exchange for your kindness and generosity, we would love to help raise awareness for your brand. We will be giving out goodie bags to the first 100 customers and your brand will definitely be printed on collaterals to be given away. We are expecting an attendance of at least 200 members of the public and we will ensure that publicity of your sponsorship will be done on our Facebook page as well.

Thank you so much for taking time out to read this and we look forward to your favourable reply.

Best regards,
Samantha (On behalf of team Whisk & Gift)
whisk.and.gift@gmail.com
https://www.facebook.com/whiskandgift

Happy Homebaker said...

Hi Samantha, thank you for your invitation however I am sorry that I am not able to participate in your event. I am not a professional baker and also due to certain constraints I can only bake in small batches, hope you understand. I wish Whisk & Gift a great success in your bake sale event!

Baking Scientist said...

Lovely! simple recipes like this appeals to me most! :)