Japan Lights: Japanese Cookbook #3: Okonomiyaki

Japanese Cookbook #3: Okonomiyaki

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Okonomiyaki is on the absolute top of my list of best Japanese meals. Just after I tried one, I knew I have to learn how to do this, because I will miss it terribly after coming back home.

Okonomiyaki is at the same time super easy and hard to make. It’s easy to make a basic version, since it doesn’t require many ingredients and work, but it’s very, very hard to make it look and taste as in a place serving it. Mostly because no matter how hard we try, frying pan is not a teppan and kitchen spatula is not the same as special okonomiyaki one. But here it is: an easy, cooking 101 recipe you can make at every house, not only in Japan.

Ingredients:

1/2 cup of dashi (you can use broth - it will change the taste, but not everyone likes fishy pancakes)

1 egg

1 cup of flour

1/2 tea spoon of baking powder (it's possible to skip it, but the okonomiyaki will be less puffy)

shredded cabbage (amount depends on other ingredients, but 2-3 cups minimum)

other additions: vegetables or meat (pork, asparagus, spinach, rice cake, cheese, octopus, squid, shrimp, fried noodles, really, whatever you like! After all the name means"grilling what you like")

cooking oil

Dashi

Toppings:

okonomiyaki sauce (otafuku)

mayonnaise

Otafuku

You can also use BBQ sauce instead of otafuku and use seaweed flakes or bonito (dried fish flakes) for topping.

Preparation:

Prepare dashi and mix it with flour and baking powder (I usually used cold dashi from the fridge).

Add an egg and mix until it's smooth.

Add cabbage and other chosen ingredients (whatever you like and feel like eating! Just make sure it's prepared to be eaten after only a few minutes of frying).

Mix it all until it's one mass. It's not really a batter or dough, but it should be sticking together (like on the picture below) - the more it is, the easier it would be to fry it.

Prepare your frying pan- put on some oil and wait until it gets hot.

Put the prepared mass on the frying pan, making sure it's all in the one place and even it with spatula (make sure it's not too high, so it won't be raw inside)

Fry it on both sides until it's browned.

Serve immediately with otafuku sauce and mayonnaise on top.

That's it! Again, I remind you that this is the easiest recipe, meant for people who struggle to make something with Japanese products. If you feel up for something more complicated (and probably more like restaurant okonomiyaki) here's a nice recipe.