I lived in Japan for 6 months as a High School exchange student. It was amazing. These are called 'Onigiri'. Its very similar is taste and texture to sushi, probably because its made with sushi rice and nori (seaweed paper). Its a really nice entree or snack. My host Mothers made this as a lunchbox staple.
step 1.
Cook the SUSHI rice and get the nori and pickled ginger ready.
step 2.
If you can get them fresh, use the mushrooms as is. But i could only get dried, so let them soak in some warm water until nice and soft.
step 3.
Once the rice is cooked, let it cool by spreading it out.
step 4.
Mix the pickled ginger with the mushrooms. You can put whatever you want, but simple clean flavours work well with onigiri. If you want to make this with meat, sashimi would work, or finely diced poached chicken. I added some essential Japanese flavours such as mirin and sushi vinegar. Again, its all completely up to you as to what you want to put in it.
step 5.
Shape the rice into a triangle shape with a small well in it to put the mixture.
step 6.
Now you have a neat little ball of YUM!
step 7.
Some last little touches to add. Wrap the rice triangle ball in a small strip of nori paper around one of the edges. You could wrap it completely in the nori if you liked. Lastly, dip the top in some toasted sesame seeds and serve with whatever kind of dipping sauce you want. I used Ponzu, which is made from a dash of soy sauce, a little bit of lemon juice, rice vinegar and some dashi(a staple japanese base for broths/soups/stocks.) You could, like i did, substitute the dashi for the water the mushrooms were soaking in, it has a similar subtle flavour.
