Rice Balls

Rice Balls

I used to know these Malaysian girls who made these squares of pressed rice (called nasi impit) around exams. It seemed such a simple exam time snack and since we had some sushi rice (glutinous rice) left over we thought making rice balls would be a good idea.

They taste something like sushi balls realistically as we filled them with sushi type vegetables. The exceptions were the sundried tomato (which was so good in it!) and tamarind water. There’s this lovely Indian vegetarian restaurant in Dublin that does these pani puri that we’ve become a bit obsessed with. We stumbled on some tamarind concentrate in a Middle Eastern shop recently though and have been looking for a use for it and this seemed the opportunity. Tamarind gives off a kind of spicy minty taste, though we found we should have added more in the recipe below as we couldn’t taste it very strongly. It’s not the most common ingredient either, so you could just use soy sauce or anything to your taste.

What we used:

-          1 cup sushi rice

-          1/2 pepper

-          3 mushrooms

-          1/3  cucumber

-          4-5 sundried tomatoes

-          3 teaspoons tamarind concentrate, diluted in 1/3 cup water (though I would use more on redoing this recipe!)

   1.       Cook the rice until mushy enough to stick and mould into balls.

   2.       Chop the vegetables very finely. Add the tamarind water/sauce

   3.       Get about handful size amounts of rice (once cooled somewhat, so you don’t burn your hands!) and mould it into a cup shape so it sticks together. Add the filling. Cover the hole with about a tablespoon more rice and mould into a ball. Realistically you can also try making these smaller.

   4.       Cover with some oil and place into an oven at about 200 ̊ for 30mins (or until browned).

The result is a rice ball that’s crispy on the outside, soft and warm on the inside and filled with minty spicy crunchy goodness on the inside. Conor said making more bite size versions would be especially nice…