Black Bean Sticky Rice » Melbourne Japanese Restaurant Guide

Today’s recipe is not exactly a ‘sweet’ but a traditional, regional form of ‘okowa’ (sticky rice cooked with other ingredients). Mitori Okowa is made not with red azuki beans but with black mitori beans, a variety of black-eyed pea, cultivated in Oita Prefecture’s Usa region. Because mitori beans have harder skins than azuki beans, they don’t disintegrate when cooked and lend an attractive purplish colour to the rice. The tradition remains from using Mitori Okowa in Buddhist memorial ceremonies, and there is also a custom of eating it during the first Bon festival following the death of a family member, and delivering some to neighbours and relatives. Here I’ve used ‘black beans’ or ‘black turtle beans’, which are easier to find in Melbourne. Enjoy the slightly different texture from azuki beans and the beautiful purple colour.