. >> well, for me, the tradition started three years ago when jeff sakai came in and asked me to make an usu which is a stone vessel to pound the mochi in, right? i didn't know what it was, but he gave me the dimensions and i made a stone vessel for pounding mochi. and jeff decided that well, we should go ahead and pound mochi at my studio, and that was the start of -- that was the first of the three that we've done so far. >> wesley, can you talk a little about that process of making it for people who aren't familiar with it when they hear pounding of mochi? >> sure. mochi is a special kind of rice. what you do is you wash it and soak it overnight. when you bring it in, it's already been processed. what you do then is basically steam it for -- i think it's probably 45 minutes to an hour. and then at that point, you go through kind of what you sort of see as the traditional mochi pounding. you start with sticks that are used to kind of prepare and sort of coalesce the rice into a ball. and then you have two people who alternate pounding with what essentially is a mallet. and then at s

then add 370 millimeters of the colored simmering liquid and add sakai. the amount of water needed is less than for regular short-grained rice since the glutinous rice soaked up enough water. >> now we just place that in here, the rice cooker. >> okay. >> and all we have to do is press the button. okay. >> while we wait, let's make salt. >> what do you mean make? don't we mix the ceasesames and salt? >> no, no, technique. >> the mixture goes best with sekihan rice. >> chef saito used white sesame seeds because he wants it to look a bit more elegant. the sesame seeds and the salt do not mix well because of the difference in weight. so you won't have a nice balance when it's sprinkled over the sekihan. here's our chef's technique. to solve this problem, we will add an extra step. place the sesame seeds, salt and a little water in a frying pan. stir over low heat to evaporate the moisture. >> i never knew that. that's wonderful. so just mix it until the moisture is gone? >> gone. >> evaporates. >> interesting. >> make sure to constantly stir with chopsticks