First : the adzuki beans. One of my local stores had them last year and I was happy! I bought a bag and have been using it up. They require at least 12 hours of soaking, and then cooking for a long time, and then pulverizing and cooking some more, and a little bit of brown sugar (and mirin, which I finally found this year, too - the local stores are carrying more oddity things). They sell the finished thing in the store as 'red bean paste' or 'adzuki bean paste' but that is even sweeter and would be expensive to buy pre-made.
So I spent the morning experimenting, once again, with the bean paste that I rarely make. I also ended up putting some baking soda in it at one point and being afraid I had done something terribly wrong ala chemistry. But, no, that worked well. It just foamed up and looked odd for a few minutes probably with the bit of rice wine vinegar I had in the water during the boiling. Anyway, it became success.
Once that was turned off, I started the rice - which I'm pretty good at by now.
1 cup of rice, washed - 2 cups of water, bit of olive oil, bit of salt, bit of rice wine vinegar, boil until it is almost dry, but not quite.
Mix in 1/4 cup or LESS of white sugar, and just enough rice wine vinegar on top of that until the sugar is wet, no more - mix while still hot, over and over, scraping the spoon over and over, until the mixture is soft - then add white sesame seeds, and mix one more time.
At the beginning of learning this rice mixture, I just made rice balls out of the rice mixture itself, and added a little bit of seaweed on top of each one - it was still very good, and easy to bring in a lunchbox.
Here is the pinch point. The rice will be hot and doing it by hand is possible but your hands will turn red. When I did that I put some salt on my hand, made the ball, and then put the ball down in the glass plate, salt in hand, repeat etc. I bought some little onigiri triangular molds last year and have used them a few times. The trick is to not put too much rice in the first layer - and then add a tiny bit of salt (shio), then a spoon of the bean paste, then another layer of rice, and press the mold together until it is firm. Press the mold out on the plate and it should look like the onigiri in the picture below, white rice on both sides, with a bit of bean showing in the cross section. Take a small piece of seaweed and wrap it around the bottom of the triangle so it can be held easily. Stand the onigiri up and move onto the next.
This can get very messy. I probably need more practice. I end up washing and wiping my hands clean every minute or so until I am done - and end up with a stack of nice snacks.
I put some red curry paste, real mayonnaise and wasabi paste on a plate and eat one with a fork - probably not allowed, but I really like the condiments.
Time-intensive, the materials were harder to find, but NOT expensive.
Even the onigiri molds were only three dollars - it was just getting them when we were getting something else and then actually using them that is the kicker.
dry goods cabinet - with split peas, lentils, rice, noodles, and dried beans. There are a few cans of sardines and some more curry paste and blocks behind there, as well.
