Thai-nigiri

This is a sort of Japanese/Thai fusion. The ingredients are completely Thai, but the method is Japanese.

Firstly I made a Thai curry soboro.

Onion, garlic, massaman curry paste and pork mince fried together …

… then some soy sauce, fish sauce, tamarind paste, and brown sugar went in …

 …and some coconut milk powder …

… lemon grass, and a bit of tomato paste …

… a bit of water followed, and I simmered it, stirring often …

… until it was quite dry.

Then I left it to cool overnight, while I soaked a couple of cups of long grain glutinous rice in water.

Next day I steamed the rice over a pot of boiling water until it was cooked:

Then I mixed it with a very little coconut milk in which I'd dissolved half a teaspoon each of salt and sugar:

The rice absorbed that completely, it could probably have absorbed a great deal more, but I wanted it quite dry and sticky.

I used the rice to make onigiri.

I lined a tiny silicon bowl with Glad-Wrap, filled it with rice and made a walnut-sized indentation in the middle:

Pressed about 2 teaspoons of the Thai curry soboro into the middle:

Covered that with more rice, and used the dangling bits of plastic under my hands to shape the rice into a ball:

Because nori wouldn't really go with Thai food, I decided to coat the rice balls with crushed nuts. There were no peanuts in the cupboard, so I used toasted cashews,…

… that I pulverised in a mortar:

Then I wrapped the rice balls in more plastic and put them in the freezer.

I have eaten one of them (they need warming in the microwave to soften the rice) and I have to say, it was delicious. The curry soboro is very strongly flavoured, I was a bit afraid it had too much of everything in it, but it's just right as a seasoning for the rice.