mbarker | A taste treat?

Yomogi mochi (toasted), a little brown sugar and soy sauce, and cinnamon?

Start with yomogi mochi -- that's the pounded sweet rice, but with mugwort mixed in. It's a green spice, that grows all over the place around here. Now, toast that. It will swell up, and often expand quite a bit.

In a small bowl, mix up some brown sugar and soy sauce. This is the normal dipping sauce for toasted mochi, and is very nice.

So far, we are well within good, solid Japanese tradition.

However, I dust the soy sauce and brown sugar with a little cinnamon.

Then I dip the toasted mochi in that, so that I get a nice coating on it, and eat.

There's something about the bite of cinnamon, added to the sweet brown sugar and salty soy sauce, that just complements and perfects the toasted mugwort and mochi.

Of course, Mitsuko and other Japanese that I mention this to almost uniformly tell me that it's not traditional, but...

It sure tastes good!