Mentaiko Onigiri (明太子おにぎり, chili-cured cod roe rice ball)

Mentaiko announces itself before you do much to it: red-orange, salty, sharp with chili, a little briny in the honest way. Some cooks hesitate because roe sounds like a special-counter ingredient. Don't make a ceremony out of it. Buy good mentaiko, warm good rice, and the dish is already leaning toward you.

The one detail that decides the onigiri is temperature. Shape the rice while it's hot enough to cling, but not so hot that it burns your hands or cooks the filling into dryness. The grains should hold lightly against one another, with air still between them. Press too hard and you make a rice brick, which has its uses, mostly in construction.

We grill the mentaiko just enough to firm the surface and wake the chili cure, leaving the inside moist. Raw mentaiko is also used, but for this picnic-minded version the light grilling makes the filling neater and the flavor rounder. Salt your wet hands before shaping, not the rice bowl. That way the salt seasons the outside evenly and keeps the grains from clinging to you more than to each other.

Onigiri belongs to the practical side of the Japanese table: rice made portable, plain enough for a lunch box and good enough to feel like care. Leave the nori separate until eating if you want it crisp. Wrap it at once if you want the seaweed to soften and become part of the rice. Both are the way we do it here, depending on the hour and the appetite.