Okonomiyaki Recipe

Okonomiyaki Recipe

• June 05, 2014

Last night, we had an okonomiyaki dinner party. Mr Cheeky bought loads of okonomiyaki kits back from his Japan travels and was generous enough (as always) to share it with us. C&T hosted the party and supplied the other ingredients, I offered the cooking and Miss Egyptian Queen offered to do the okonomiyaki mixing!

 [Okonomi sauce]

You can buy the kit for a complete okonomiyaki experience, but if you can't get your hands on one, it's easy enough you make your own version at home. I've made it 3 times now without the kit and can't really tell the difference.

[Okonomiyaki kit]

Okonomiyaki is a Japanese pancake and often referred to as a Japanese pizza as the ingredients can be adapted to personal preference. Personally, it tastes more like a doughy omelette to me rather than a pizza. If you can't get your hands on some of the right ingredients, it wouldn't be disastrous to substitute okonomi sauce with regular bbq sauce, or Japanese kewpie mayo with regular mayo. Whilst the Japanese sauces do taste quite different to the regular sauces, there is no right or wrong way to make it, and what you put in it is entirely up to you. 

We made a variety of bacon ones, crabsticks and bacon, and crabsticks with prawns. Here's a recipe for the bacon okonomiyaki. 

Ingredients:
3/4 cup plain flour
1/4 cup glutinous rice flour
1/4 tsp salt
3/4 cup cold water
2 eggs
2 spring onions, chopped
Half head of white/green cabbage, finely sliced
Packet of bacon
Oil for frying
Seaweed powder or blitzed nori sheets
Bonito flakes
Okonomi sauce (Japanese BBQ sauce)
Kewpie mayo (Japanese mayo)


Directions:
1. Mix the 2 flours, salt and water together until you get a pancake-like batter consistency. Add the eggs and mix until incorporated. This is your okonomiyaki base 
2. Add spring onion and cabbage to the batter and mix well. The batter should now fully coat the spring onion and cabbage
3. Drizzle some oil to the frying pan and add bacon slices, turn heat onto full. Add the some of okonomiyaki batter on top of the bacon and spread out evenly until no bacon can be seen and fry this side on medium-high heat for 5 mins
4. Gently lift with a spatula after 5 mins and if the underside is golden and stiff enough, turn okonomiyaki over and fry for another 5 mins or until cooked through. You could try flipping it at this point but beware! It could end up on the floor...
5. Once cooked through, dish up. Drizzle okonomi sauce and mayo on top, sprinkle seaweed powder and top with bonito flakes
6. Tuck in!

*You can make it more flavourful by adding dashi stock instead of water, and adding crabsticks/cooked prawns/seafood flavour tempura bits/bonito flakes into the batter. These are all variations and you can try a combination of them. Some of this may not be traditional but it's all about fun creations.