This doesn’t mean you must get everything prepared beforehand: – okonomiyaki is one of those foods like an omelette, where you can stick leftovers and all sorts on it. Part of the fun is finding combinations of food to go on as toppings. So long as you have the basics (flour, water, egg, cabbage) it’s do-able!

So here’s my take on it. If you want to try it out, you don’t have to follow my example to a ‘T’. Simply substitute what you have left over (that isn’t to say stick something like chocolate on it! Unless, well, you want to…), find things in your fridge or cupboards that go well together. Meats, fish, vegetables all fit in, even some fruit is OK. Look around the net, or experiment!

Hiroshima-yaki uses cabbage and batter, as well as yaki-soba and a fried egg. I used this as a base to make mine. [As you may notice, unlike the Hiroshima-style, I mix the batter in with the cabbage. You can do this, or you can mix everything with the batter and put the cabbage in as a layer of toppings separately (maybe add some batter over the top to keep it together).]　And yes, the spiced rum was an odd choice, but hey, it worked [and I like rum, so what you gonna do? ( ^ _ ^ )b]

Ok, so my ingredients were:

- 1 cup plain flour
- 1 cup water
- 3 eggs
- Two handfuls of chopped cabbage and leek
- 1 level tablespoon of sesame seeds
- 1 teaspoon or mirin
- 1 screwcap of Captain Mogan’s Spiced rum “Yarrgh!”
- Half a bundle of soba noodles
- 1 small tin of crab meat
- Tomato Ketchup
- Worcester sauce
- Mayonaise
- Salt & pepper to taste

1. In a medium sized bowl mix the flour, water, one egg, sesame seeds, mirin, spiced rum and salt & pepper. Mix until you have a batter. Drain the crab meat and add half to the batter.

2. Cook the soba for a few minutes in boiling water. Drain them, and then put them in a frying pan with some olive oil. When they start to brown, take them out and put them in a bowl.

3. Fry the other two eggs in the frying pan. Make sure they are broken up and mixed together. This will make the base of your okonomiyaki, so spread the egg out to the desired size. Add another egg if necessary. Cook one side, then flip it and cook the other side for literally a few seconds. Take it off and put it on a small plate.

4. Pour the batter onto the frying pan. Make sure you’ve oiled the pan up with some olive oil so it’s lubricated well. Cook on one side, then either flip it, or stick it under a grill. Add the rest of the crab meat to the pan next to the batter to cook it for a while.

5. Take out the batter and put it on a plate. Put the egg back in (with the side cooked least facing down). Add the yaki-soba and the cooked crab meat on top. Then stick the batter on top of that. Wedge a spatula underneath it and put the whole lot on a plate (hard without a wide spatula!).

6. Mix even amounts of Tomato Ketchup and Worcester sauce to make the sauce, then spoon it on the batter and spread it out over the top. I also added a little spiced rum and mirin to the sauce. (You could also cook the sauce in a small pan first if you like). Add some mayo on top and then serve!

いただきます！

So what is it exatcly? Okonomiyaki is like an omelette or a pizza. The compound for okonomiyaki お好み焼き has the kanji for suki 好き and the kanji for yaki 焼き; basically, what you like fried / griddled / toasted / bbq’d, etc. It’s a bit of a vague term, but it’s used to describe a type of omelette made from flour and water (and sometimes egg) that contains cabbage as a base, then has toppings or ingredients of your choice. It’s not really as varied as pizza in terms of toppings, but you get the drift.

Okonomiyaki comes from the Kansai area of Japan, mainly in Osaka. Osaka is famous for a lot of Japan’s “take-out” style cuisine, such as okonomiyaki, takoyaki, ramen. Much like yakiniku, okonomiyaki is a dish you get involved with. Most restaurants have tables with a teppan cooking area. You get given the ingredients prepared, and you mix it and cook it yourself. Ok, there’s not much cooking skill needed, all you need top do is make sure it doesn’t burn. But it adds to the experience.

There are two famous types of okonomiyaki: Osaka okonomiyaki and Hiroshima okonomiyaki.

[Photo by Elijah in Osaka]

Osaka-yaki is the traditional kind; the ingredients and toppings are mixed together and it makes a much thinner omelette, topped off with an okonomiyaki sauce, mayo and sometimes bonito flakes.

 

[Photo by potatomato.com]

Hiroshima-yaki on the otherhand, tend to layer the ingredients. There’s a lot more cabbage in the batter, and they also add fried egg, and yakisoba. They are usually topped off with an okonomiyaki sauce and some extra toppings. Hiroshima-yaki tend to be much taller than Osaka-yaki.

My favourite way is to make it Osaka style. I actually like the Hiroshima style more, but there’s so much there that a lot gets wasted, I just can’t eat it! Osaka style are also easier to make at home, as well as being quicker to prepare.

Traditional ingredients include using dashi stock, bonito flakes, an okonomiyaki sauce (similar to the tonkatsu / bulldog sauces) Japanese mayonaise and grated yam. However, much to my dissapointment, Japanese cooking isn’t as widespread over here in the UK, so i’m gonna talk you through my recipe which you can find ingredients for in any supermarket.

Ok, so the ingredients you will need are:

For the batter:

- Cabbage (pre-shredded is good. I use a mix that has leek in it as well. I love leek!)
- 1 egg
- 1 cup of plain white flour
- 1/2 cup water
- 3 slices of bacon, or a meat/fish equivalent
- A pinch of salt
- (optional) leek

For the sauce:

- Tomato Ketchup
- Worcester sauce
- Mayonaise

You’ll need a frying pan and some cooking oil (I use extra virgin olive oil). A grill is also useful as well.

I tend to wing my batter. It should be a little thin, but if you are a bit worried the first few times, add a little more flour. Adding another egg may help it to form as well.

1. Shred the cabbage (and leek if you have it) into thin strips. You’re looking at getting them about 2 inches by 1cm. Put this in a measuring jug or bowl or something.

2. Add to it the egg, the flour, the water and the salt. Mix this all together with a spoon until you have a batter. Don’t worry about lumps, just try your best to beat them out. Egg should be kind of whisked.

3. Put a teaspoon of oil into a hot frying pan, and add the rashers of bacon. Cook them until they are browning, then take them out and cut them into chunks. Put them back in the pan and spread them around the pan evenly.

4. There should still be some oil in the pan you used to fry the bacon. Add a little more if necessary, then add the batter over the top of the bacon.

5. Wait for the batter to cook a little bit, make sure your grill is set to high. When the edges start to solidify, use a spatula to lift up the edges a little. When the main part starts to solidify, get the spatula underneath as much as you can without breaking the batter. If you can get it loose do so, or try to give the pan a little shake.

6. Stick the pan under the grill. Cook the top until it starts to brown. The whole okonomiyaki should be solid now, so if you want, take it out of the grill and back onto the hob. Then flip it over. This makes it easier to apply the sauce, because you now have a surface formed in the shape of the frying pan.

7. Mix up the sauce. You need equal parts of the tomato ketchup and Worcester sauce. I actually use a little more TK though. Spoon the sauce over the okonomiyaki, then do the same with the mayo.

Serve up and enjoy. I find it nice to have with milk. This is definately a dish you can experiment with. Try adding a stock instead of water. Maybe add more vegetables like courgette or red onion, or add yakisoba and an egg on top. As the name implies, It’s up to you!

[photos by myself, greg.abstrakt.ch, Elijah in Osaka and potatomato.com - I'll stop using other people's photographs when I get to Japan ( T . T ). Thank you everyone! Gimme an e-mail if you want me to take anything down.]

Ramen Chef: You stupid amateurs could never appreciate my noodles!

Tampopo: But people who eat noodles are all amateurs! So why make noodles amateurs can’t appreciate?

This film is food. More so, it is a display of the appreciation for good food. Long seen as a Japanese classic, ‘Tampopo’ (タンポポ) is a story about a lonely widower who is encouraged to improve her ramen making skills and turn her failing restaurant into a success.

The main plot involves truck driver Goro (Yamazaki Tsutomu) and his colleague Gun (Watanabe Ken) stopping off at a ramen joint to get some food. Tampopo (Miyamoto Nobuko) runs the restaurant after the death of her husband, and is running it poorly. After criticising Tampopo’s noodles and getting in a fight with the hefty Pisken (Yasuoka Rikiya), Goro agrees to teach Tampopo and make her noodles great.

Directed by Juzo Itami, Tampopo has a delightful cast, including Yamazaki Tsutomu as the experienced truck driver Goro and a young Watanabe Ken as Gun. The film is a little quirky and has some side-plots that leave you thinking ‘What the hell?!…’, but generally it is an enjoyable film. Tampopo also has a very strong following of people who love Ramen.

There are several sub-plots to the film, all having something to do with food. The old woman who likes to squeeze food. The con artist who loves pancake rolls. They are all pretty peculiar, but entertaining nonetheless.

Many scenes have gained a lot of reputation. The opening scene is almost like a mantra on how to eat noodles. The sphagetti scene in the french restaurant shatters preconceptions about how foreigners eat.

A much loved scene is the hobo scene, where Goro takes Tampopo and her son to see a group of homeless food connoisseurs. [The expressions on their faces, they make me laugh every time!] The part where one of the hobos sneaks into a restaurant with Tampopo’s son to make him a rice omelette feels like a Warner Brother’s cartoon, as the avoid the security guard. Genius. Futurama pays tribute to this scene in the episode ‘30% Iron Chef’, where bender cooks for a group of hobos and learns the secret of flavour.

I recommend watching this film, and I’d give it 4.5 stars out of 5. Sure, the plot drifts at time, but the general feel of the film makes it enjoyable to watch. Take a look at the trailer, not the best trailer in the world but it gives you an idea.

On a similar note, out last year is a hollywood film called ‘The Ramen Girl’, which seems to share a similar storyline. I haven’t seen it yet, but from the trailer my thoughts are ‘meh’. Still, it has Yamazaki Tsutomu as the old ramen master, so i’ll have to wait and see. Here’s the trailer if you are interested. I’m not sure Brittany Murphy is the right person for the main role though.

Still, you’ve got to try them. Gyouza are a type of dumpling which is usually fried or grilled. They come in a variety of names, the most being ‘Gyouza’ in Japan, ‘Jiăozi’ in China, and ‘potstickers’ in the US. The idea is pretty simple, they’re made from a basic water/flour pasta recipe, usually with a meat based filling. Like a large ravioli or tortellini The traditional gyouza contain diced pork with cabbage, green onion and garlic, although you’ll find endless amounts of combinations. Chicken gyouza are also pretty popular, as well as vegetarian gyouza. “Yo! Sushi” make a fantastic duck and miso paste gyouza set, it’s fantastic *drools*.

But enough about that, here’s my recipe for basic pork gyouza.

Ok, the ingredients you’ll need for about a dozen gyouza are:

Gyouza skins: [either make from scratch or buy pre-made ones]

- 1 cup of flour
- 1/2 cup of water

For the filling:

- Diced/minced pork
- Green (salad) onion
- Half a white onion
- Half a cup of diced cabbage (either type is fine)
- Two cloves of garlic
- A little amount of grated ginger (i’d say about… the size of a 50p/a quarter’s worth)
- Pinch of salt to taste
- Extra virgin oil or equivalent
- [optional] a few drops of toasted sesame seed oil

For the dipping sauce:
- Equal measures of dark soy sauce and white rice wine vinegar (or normal white vinegar).

You’ll also need some tin foil if you wish to freeze some for later, and a small bowl of water.

To make the skins from scratch, take the water and flour and mix together. This isn’t a really a science thing, so if you’ve got a sloppy mixture, then add more flour. If its too tough, add more water. You are looking to get a consistency where you will be able to roll it thinly without it sticking to the pin or cracking! I’d say keep adding a little bit of flour until just after it stops sticking to your hands. Once you’ve the got the dough thoroughly mixed, split it up into small balls about the size of a £2 coin / silver dollar. Roll these balls into flat circles. The thinner you can get them, the better they’ll taste. They should be about 3 1/2 inches / 9-10 cm in size.

For the mixture:

1.) Take the onions, cabbage, ginger and salt, dice them and mix them together in a bowl.

2.) Put a teaspoon of olive oil in a hot frying pan. De-shell the garlic cloves and dice them into small pieces. Put them in the hot oil until they start to brown.

3.) Once the garlic is browned, add the diced/minced pork. Cook it a little and break it up in the pan using a spatula.

4.) Once the pork is nearly cooked, add a little olive oil to the cabbage, onions and ginger mixture, then add them to the frying pan with the pork and toss (or stir) together.

5.) Turn the stove off, and take prepare your gyouza skins. Take one, dip your finger into the bowl of water and make a semi-circle around the inner edge. Put a small teaspoon of filling in the middle. Too much filling will make the gyouza burst.

6.) Fold the gyouza in half. Gently push the filling together and stick the two edges of the skin together, sealing the gyouza. Then dip your fore finger and thumb in the water and wet the edges you just sealed together. Then take the gyouza from one end, and fold a little of the edge on to itself. Do this down the gyouza until you reach the edge. Squeeze together to make sure the gyouza are sealed.

7.) If you make excess gyouza like I do, take some tin foil and line up about 6 gyouza at a time for a typical serving. Wrap them up in the foil and just stick them in the freezer.

8.) Heat up a frying pan and add a teaspoon of olive oil and a few drops of sesame seed oil (careful this stuff can overpower).

9.) Stick the gyouza into the frying pan and fry until one side is cooked (it might be hard to tell, it goes a little white and bubbly). Turn them over and repeat.

10.) Now, you can serve them like this, although I add a few teaspoons of cold water to the pan. Be careful of this though! It will spit up and go everywhere. If you do do that, turn the heat down a bit first to save setting the whole place on fire or scalding yourself.

11.) Serve the gyouza on a plate. Mix equal amounts of dark soy sauce and rice wine vinegar to make the sauce. Dip and enjoy!

Gyouza can bee cooked in different ways, you can fry them, grill them, steam them, boils them, all sorts. Try changing the filling and the dipping sauce as well.

You can find the gyouza skins in some chinese/japanese grocery stores. They usually come in packs of about 24 in the freezer. Defrost before you use them.

Gyouza make a great accompaniment to ramen! ¬_¬

List night out of sheer chance I made yakitori, so i’m going to show you how to make them today. Let it be known that I cheated (*shock!* *horror!*) by using a pre-made sauce. We’re going to making Negima (ねぎま) yakitori today. That is, yakitori with onion.

Ok, you will need (for roughly 6 skewers):

- Three large Chicken breasts
- One large White onion
- A few green onions (spring onion/scallion/negi [ねぎ], whatever you wanna call them)

and for the sauce

- 1/2 cup of dark soy sauce (or 4 tablespoons)
- 1/2 cup of mirin (or 4 tablespoons)
- 2 teaspoons of sugar
- 2 teaspoons of sake (optional)
- 1 clove of crushed garlic (optional)

The best way of doing yakitori is over a flame, so if you’ve got access to a BBQ or something similar that’s great. If you haven’t got a flame, then a griddle is the next best option. No griddle? Then use a grill, or as a last resort, cook the chicken and onions in a frying pan and then skewer them afterwards.

Just take care! Especially be careful with the skewers. Not only are they sharp but if you use a flame, the wooden types can catch fire. The metal ones will get hot, so use something to turn them with. Surprisingly though the metal skewers tend to cool down after taken them off the heat really quickly. Just take care.

Take the chicken breast and cut them up into cubes about 1 inch x 1 inch x 1inch. I prefer to marinate them in half the sauce either overnight or for a few hours.

For the white onion:

Chop each end of the onion off, take the skin off and then chop the onion in half from one end to the other. Then cut these two halfs in half, and then in half again.

Cut the green onion up into about half inch segements. Discard the ends.

Now take your skewers and skewer the chicken, onion and green onion onto them. I usually go onion, green onion, chicken, repeat. I say about 3 pieces of chicken on each skewer is enough, maybe 4. Dip them in sauce if you didn’t marinate them, then cook them over the fire/griddle/grill. Cook on either side for about 10 minutes each. Remember that on a fire or under the grill, the chicken will cook OK, but you’ll probably need to turn the chicken onto all four sides if using a griddle like me.

Some people prefer to cook without the sauce on first, which is understandable because of washing up that is bound to come from it. Trust me, I had a hell of a time getting the burnt on sauce off of my griddle. One thing to consider though, griddle plates with the ridges and BBQ grate give the meat and onions that classic BBQ stripped look! So if you’re doing food for a party or something, then the look is usually important

Once both sides are no longer pinkish and have started to brown, brush on some more sauce and put them back on. After a few minutes, I would take on piece of chicken off and cut it in half to see if it is cooked. Put the rest of the sauce you made in a frying pan and heat for a few minutes until it starts to simmer and gets thicker. Take the chicken off the heat and serve on a plate, and pour over the thickened sauce onto the skewered chicken kabobs.

And there you have it, Negima Yakitori!

I actually used a pre-made sauce from Wagamama. Soy and rice wine yakitori marinade. Beautiful, well recommended. For those going out for the ingredients, your local Morrisons/Tescos/Adsa should have all these stuff, including the mirin. If you can’t get the mirin or sake, don’t worry, just add a little more sugar to it. Maybe a little rice wine vinegar or white vingar depending on your tastes.