2 ¼ cups Japanese rice

     ½ teaspoon salt

     1 tablespoon butter

     6 sheets nori, cut into halves

     Shoyu Tare

     ¼ cup Japanese shoyu

     3 tablespoons brown sugar

Steam rice according to package directions or in rice cooker. In a small bowl, mix shoyu and brown sugar. Set aside.

After rice has cooked, put into large bowl. Sprinkle with salt and mix gently so as not to crush the grains. Let rice cool slightly. Wet hands with cold water and scoop approximately 200 milliliters (¾ cup) of rice into palm. Squeeze rice firmly into triangles, ovals or squares: ensure that you have two wide flat sides. Squeeze and turn the onigiri (translated as pressed by hands) until you have a firm geometric shape. The rice should not crumble. (Better to err on the side of over-squeezed than under-squeezed.) Placed onigiri on a plate. Wash starch off hands and wet again. Form another onigiri. Always wash and wet hands your hands before each new onigiri.

After forming the onigiri, get a large frying pan or electric griddle and heat to medium. Melt butter. Scoop approximately ¼ teaspoon of shoyu tare onto one side of an onigiri and spread evenly. Place onigiri sauced side down in the frying pan. Do this quickly with as many as will fill the frying pan. Watch so that the sauce does not burn. You may want to turn down heat. When the sauce side has turned tawny brown and has become slightly hardened, spoon tare onto the top side of the onigiri and flip it over. Once both sides are evenly browned, place onigiri on plate. Wrap with nori. Eat while hot.

Makes 12.

Tip: For those of you worried about cholesterol and how Elvis died you can bypass the butter and grill the onigiri on the barbeque.

Hiromi Goto's recipe from Bento Box #30: Japanese Cooking and Beyond (Powell Street Festival Society, $15). Reprinted with permission from the publisher.