Bitter gourd leaf Onigiri (Rice ball with karela leaf)

• Servings: 2.
• Preparation time: 2 minutes.
• Frying time: 3 minutes.
• Making time: 1 minutes(each).
• Total time: 6 minutes.

Onigiri (Rice ball) is one of the best, popular staple snacks you get in Japan; in my opinion it is very comfortable to pack Tiffin for kids and carry for picnic or travel, it is soul food for Japanese and now for me too.

About a year ago, when I was travelling with two of my family friends to Mount Fuji and nearby area in Japan; we were very hungry and purchased vegetarian Onigiri from the convenience store, it was seasoned and compressed rice ball with boiled Rajma(red beans).

From the day till now, I prepared this dish often in my kitchen. I love Onigiri so much! Wish to bring this recipe in every Indian kitchen as it is easy to carry and eat besides being very delicious. Apart from these it is light and all in one and provides enough energy.

There are many variety of vegetarian and non vegetarian Onigiri with or without seaweed (Nori) available in the restaurant, supermarket and convenience stores in Japan.

Here I used Japanese sticky rice(Koshihikari rice) and gave some variation in preparation as well as in ingredients i.e. adding bitter gourd leaves (as it was available in my balcony pot), you can use coriander leaves instead of bitter gourd leaf and parboiled rice instead of Japanese sticky rice, and best way is to use new rice.

Ingredients:

• Japanese cooked rice (Uruchi Mai/ Koshihikari Rice): 2 cups
• Boiled Rajma (Red beans): 2-3 tablespoon
• Bitter gourd leaf: 6-8 no.
• Sesame seed: 1 tablespoon
• Soya sauce: 1 tablespoon
• Salt: ½ teaspoon
• Sesame oil: 1 teaspoon

Preparation:

1. Chop bitter gourd leaf, keep aside.
2. Take a fry pan, put oil, when it gets hot add sesame seed, let it sputter for few seconds; add chopped bitter gourd leaf. Fry for about couple of minutes on medium flame. It will shrink and bright green colour appears, put off the flame, keep aside.

Method:

1. Take a mixing bowl; put all ingredients, mix all ingredients well, now the mixture is ready to prepare the Onigiri.
2. It is important to wet your hands with water to prevent the rice from sticking, take a handful of mixture and give the shape of triangle or any shape you like to. In this recipe I used cookie cutter and cling wrap to give the shape to Onigiri, see the photo given…
3. Onigiri is ready to be served, if you want to store this for next day picnic store in an airtight container in refrigerator.

Bitter gourd leaf Onigiri (Rice ball with karela leaf) by Nag Ratna Sahu is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.