Okonomiyaki

Konnichiwa!

Well recently I’ve been very hardworking, cooking. It was inspired by a friend whom I was staying with in Sydney when I was there for a holiday. She sort of had her meals planned out for the week and shops once a week. In my old working place, I could access to the grocery just 5 mins away and I would just grab what I felt like cooking on that day itself. In some ways, you create alot of wastage, especially when I only cook for 1. So now since my new work place doesn’t have a well-stocked grocery nearby, I tend to stock up once a week as well. So these days I’ve been doing the same but you know what! I still overbuy. Haha. 😡

I plan it over by deciding if it’s going to be a Asian or non-asian week. One plate meals or more than one plate meals, and I try to make dishes with the same type of vege to try to avoid wastages. You know, you can keep chicken or seafood in the freezer but you can’t really keep vegetables in it. Luckily, I have 4 dogs so whenever I have excess veg that I can’t bring on the following week to cook, I cook them for my dogs 😉

So back to the okonomiyaki.

Okonomiyaki is a Japanese savoury pancake containing a variety of ingredients. The name is derived from the word okonomi, meaning “what you like” or “what you want”, and yaki meaning “grilled” or “cooked”. The ingredients are fairly simple and straight forward. Just imagine making a regular pancake but instead of using milk, you use a type of stock for the pancake batter and a lot of cabbage is added in to fill you up. It is then topped with okonomiyaki or takoyaki sauce, kewpie mayonaise and bonito flakes (dancing fish hehe). It’s a very popular dish in Osaka especially.

You can also add shrimp, bacon or squid. If you want to make it a vegetarian, you can too! It’s a very versatile dish yet forgiving, except that if you put in too much filling, it may be difficult to flip over unless you have some ninja-flipping skills. Hehe. I adapted the recipe from Nami of Just One Cookbook.

Okonomiyaki

 

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Serves: 3

Ingredients

• ½ head cabbage with core removed, finely diced
• ½ carrot, diced
• 1 tube squid, cleaned and cut to slices.
• Oil
• 4 slices bacon, cut to 3 per strip

Okonomiyaki Batter

• 60g all purpose flour
• pinch of salt and white pepper
• pinch of sugar
• 80ml dashi, or 80ml water with 1 tsp. mushroom stock powder
• 2 large eggs
• ¼ cup Panko (japanese breadcrumbs)

Toppings

• Okonomi Sauce
• Kewpie Mayonnaise
• Spring Onion
• Bonito Flakes

Instructions

Batter

1. Mix in all the batter ingredients and whisk together. Set in the fridge while you prepare the other vegetables.
2. Remove core from cabbage, stack the leaves and dice it.
3. Add cabbage, carrot and squid into the batter and mix well.

Cook

1. Heat pan with a little oil on medium heat. Use a ladle to scoop the batter onto the pan. Lay 3 cut slices of bacon on top. Cover with a lid and let it cook for 3 minutes.
2. Remove the cover, flip the okonomiyaki. Cook the same (about 3-5 minutes on the the other side) or until it's browned.
3. Flip over again and this time, cook without the lid on just to give it some crispiness.
4. Remove from pan, and on to a plate. Squeeze some okonomi sauce, then some mayonnaise. Scatter bonito flakes and spring onion on top. Serve hot.

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