My wife and I both have unrequited wanderlust issues—we love to travel but our daughters are like little flesh-and-bone anchors. Therefore, to get our international fix, we “travel” to a new country every month by focusing on the food of that region.
After brief stops in Italy and the Philippines, my family has settled on Japan for our culinary destination this month.
Japan is an easy destination in my household, however, because my wife lived in Japan for three months and really knows her yakisoba from her yakitori. Once you’ve married a woman who worked as a street clown in Tokyo, you’re bound to pick up chopsticks—and when you have a cupboard full of soba noodles and a freezer full of gyoza, it’s time to get Nipponese.
Nonetheless, for this week’s victim I’ve chosen Okonomiyake (Oh-Ko-No-Me-Yah-Key), a popular street food in Japan. It’s quick, delicious, and a great way to clear out leftovers loitering in your fridge. The finished dish looks somewhat like American pizza, but the preparation is reminiscent of baking a pineapple upside-down cake.
I’ll be ignoring a phenomenal recipe written by Box Dog on the unbelievably useful VisualRecipes.com.
Osaka-Style Okonomiyake, a.k.a. Japanese Pizza
Click here for Box Dog’s original recipe, complete with great step-by-step photos, on VisualRecipes.com.
Ingredients
Base:
1 cup flour
Some 3/4 cup dashi (or water, see below)*
1 egg
1/8-1/4 of a green Napa cabbage
Toppings – any of the below:
Chicken
Roast pork or beef
Squid, Octopus, other seafood
Salmon
Hickory-Smoked Ham
Yellow Squash
Corn
Mushrooms
Green Onion
Garnishing – any of the below, if you can find it and actually want it:
Katsuo-bushi (dried bonito flakes)
Sakura-ebi (dried shrimps)
Beni-shoga (red ginger)
Ao-nori (green seaweed)
Sauces:
Okonomiyaki sauce (or Homemade tonkatsu sauce) (Note: Naturally, I took liberties with the original recipe at Tess’s Japanese Kitchen)
Kewpie Mayonnaise
* Dashi is japanese stock, used in heaps of different recipes. When made up it smells like smoked fish and seaweed. You can buy it from oriental grocers in sachets that come in boxes like the one to the right of the beer in the picture above. Just mix up a bit with some hot water. If you can’t find it, it’s okay – just use water.
Step 1: So firstly (I don’t do anything “firstly”) grab that cabbage and chop it up finely. Better to have too much than too little because it shrinks a little as it cooks, and it’s mega cheap anyway. Get out as much of the white stem parts as you can.
Step 2: Now break an egg into a large bowl and pour in the dashi/water, and the flour.
Step 3: Then beat mixture with a whisk fork until smooth.
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Step 4: Now add some of the finely chopped cabbage and mix as best you can well. It should end up looking like this.
Step 5: Heat up your skillet, electric frypan, grill, whatever you’re going to use to cook this baby. Preferably use something that’s got teflon on it 
(I highly recommend using a skillet or Spanish tortilla pan, for easy flipping)
Step 6: Now prepare your toppings. I’m using Chinese BBQ pork slices, a little bell pepper, some onion, mushrooms, parsely and spring onion. Just chop it all up good well.
Step 7: Throw it all in the frypan with some extra virgin olive oil (sesame is good, also) to keep it all well-lubed sauté the toppings. Cook at medium heat until either heated through or in the case of raw meat or veggies, for a few minutes until it’s getting close to being cooked.
Step 8: Arrange the nearly cooked toppings in a round small pile at the center of the skillet…
Step 9: Then throw Pour the cabbage/dough mixture on top of the topping ingredients, also in a round!
Step 10: Turn up the heat a little to Leave the heat at medium and let that bad boy cook through for 5 minutes or so. Then flip it. In the picture below, I had to cut the round in half to flip it, which doesn’t matter because we’ll be cutting it into pieces later anyway. You could always make two okonomiyaki instead! Place a large round plate over the skillet, flip, then slide the “bad boy” off the plate and back into the skillet, uncooked side down. This is the same technique used for flipping Spanish tortillas.
Let it cook for another 5-10 minutes. You can break away a bit of the dough bit when it doesn’t look raw any more and see if the cabbage and dough is cooked through. Cook until the dough appears dry around the edges and resists a little finger pressure, much like a cooked piece of white fish.
Step 11: Flip it out onto a serving plate and cover liberally with Okonomiyaki sauce and mayonnaise! OH GOD MY TASTEBUDS!
Step 12: Cut, serve and savour! Let guests add garnish and sauces to their taste. Bon apetit Douzo meshiagare!
FINAL RESULTS: Very few changes were necessary—the beauty of a flexible recipe—and the results were outstanding! A huge hit with my wife and daughters.
The Recipe: A+
The Grammar: C+
My Changes: A+
