Japan: Onigiri
Part 4 of a series
For me, Japanese food is just about perfect; low fat, with plenty of vegetables and fish, it feels very healthy and there are all kinds of interesting new flavours to enjoy. With the exception of the traditional sweets, which have the consistency of taste of congealed and sugared wallpaper paste, I could quite happily live on Japanese food indefinitely.
I did, however, become particularly besotted with one Japanese snack: the onigiri1. This is a mass of sticky rice, often formed into a fat disc or—-more commonly—-a triangle. In the centre of the rice, there’s some fish like salmon or tuna, or salmon roe, or perhaps a pickled plum. The whole thing is wrapped in dried seaweed (nori), which makes onigiri perfect for eating on the move.
