ゲストコーナー：子供も喜ぶ おにぎりの具とアレンジレシピ

How Wada Asuka Found Her Way to the 'Softly Triangular Round'

Wada had always pressed her onigiri firmly into neat triangles—until a school picnic changed everything. She shaped them in the morning, and by lunchtime they had set rock-hard. Her child's remark, 'Mom, your onigiri used to be this firm!', was the turning point. From then on she made softness her first priority. The triangle is still an intention, but the result is what she now calls 'a circle that is almost a triangle'—the corners have worn away into a gentler shape. Jane Su compared the gradual rounding to 'life itself.'

Another non-negotiable is temperature: Wada shapes onigiri straight from piping-hot rice. She has recently switched to cooking rice in an earthenware pot, lifting the lid and pressing the grains while her palms turn bright red. 'This is what onigiri is supposed to be,' she said. 'I approach it like a kind of training.'

Recipe 1: Tako-Pepe Onigiri

This is a riff on spaghetti aglio e olio reimagined as an onigiri filling. Roasted nori is melted directly into the pan and stirred through the rice, turning the whole batch a dramatic squid-ink black.

**Ingredients (makes 4–5):** 150 g boiled octopus; 1 small garlic clove; 1 dried red chili; 1 tsp olive oil; 5 g butter; 2 tsp fish sauce (soy sauce works if fish sauce is unavailable); dried oregano to taste; 400 g warm cooked rice; 1 sheet roasted nori; lemon zest to finish.

**Method:** Finely chop the octopus and mince the garlic. Warm the olive oil and butter in a frying pan and sauté the garlic and chili until fragrant—omit the chili if cooking for children who can't handle heat. Add the octopus and cook until the juices and butter-oil begin to bubble. Crumble in the nori and stir until it melts completely. Add the fish sauce, mix to combine, then remove from the heat and fold everything into the warm rice. Shape into onigiri and finish by grating lemon zest over each one.

For a family-friendly version, leave the chili out and let adults add cracked pepper to their own portions afterward. Leftover tako-pepe can be tossed with torn lettuce and used as a makeshift dressing. Jane Su, tasting it in the studio, declared it 'like paella'—and became so absorbed by the flavour mid-explanation that she completely lost the thread of the conversation.

Recipe 2: Gyushigure Onigiri

Gyushigure is the onigiri filling Wada's children think of first when the word 'onigiri' comes up. It is also the one make-ahead dish she has kept making consistently, even though she describes herself as bad at meal prep.

**Ingredients (easy-to-make quantity):** 400 g thinly sliced beef offcuts; 1 knob of ginger; sake, mirin, and soy sauce—3 tablespoons each; sugar 1 tablespoon.

**Method:** Slice the ginger into thin strips, skin on. Blanch the beef briefly in boiling water, then drain in a colander. To avoid dirtying the chopping board, use kitchen scissors to cut the meat into smaller pieces while it is still in the colander. Return everything to the pot, add the seasoning and ginger, and simmer.

**The key step:** wait for the beef to release its own fat. The temptation is to stop once the braising liquid has soaked in, but persisting past that point is what defines the dish. With continued heat, the beef begins to give off a glossy, fragrant fat of its own. Keep stirring until that moment arrives, then coat the meat in it. Beyond onigiri, the gyushigure works as kinpira with burdock root, an udon topping, a tamagoyaki filling, or simply eaten over rice.

Announcements from Wada Asuka

Wada is appearing in a commercial for Tsuyahime, a premium rice brand from Yamagata Prefecture, alongside Murata-san, the proprietor of Kikunoi, a renowned Kyoto kaiseki restaurant. The ad began airing in Yamagata on 20 October and rolls out nationally on 22 October.

She is also co-hosting *Takizawa Karen & Wada Asuka no Feelinkitchen* (滝沢カレン＆和田アスカのフィーリンキッチン) on TBS Television, on air since March 2026. Only the hero ingredient is decided in advance; everything else is cooked on instinct. It airs Monday to Friday, 9:55–10:25 a.m.