Okonomiyaki

I love Japanese food. And yes, I'm aware that's a bit of a cliche right now, but really. I love it. I love packing bento lunches, I love going out for sushi, I even make dumplings from scratch (I'll have to do an entry on that soon!) But one of the recipes I'm best at is okonomiyaki.

Okonomiyaki is a fritter loaded with vegetables and meat. The base is always lettuce or cabbage, but you can add whatever you want. It literally means "whatever you like, fried."

Brandon and I made a HUGE batch last week.

The assembly line.

Our base was cabbage and lettuce, then we added the other ingredients: purple onion, carrot, red pepper and tomato.

The meats: chicken breast and bacon.

Now, oknomiyaki is supposed to be fried in one giant piece and flipped all at once. But a while back, I discovered that you can also scramble it. This is a great solution if you're not wonderful at flipping things, or if you happen to get the mix wrong and it's not sticking in a fritter shape, or if you're just plain lazy (take a wild guess how I discovered this trick in the first place!)

I find that, when something is described as a fritter, people tend to think of a pancake with stuff in it. This can be misleading. With okonomiyaki, think of it as vegetables lightly coated in batter. Otherwise, you end up making a bland pancake with a few pieces of lettuce in it. Yuck.

Here are the proportions for my batter recipe:
2/3 cup flour
1 egg
1/3 cup water

This makes one serving. This recipe is very small. I always double, triple and sometimes quadruple it (but I also cook for leftovers, and Brandon eats a lot). So just be aware of that. As for the amount of 'stuff' to add, like I said, just make sure it's lightly coated.

At the end, you garnish with a dollop of mayo and lots of okonomi sauce, which is like a lighter version of BBQ sauce. You can get it online, or at an Asian food mart. My only advice is this: don't mix the okonomi sauce and mayo together. It ends up tasting like a Big Mac. Incidentally, I think the secret Big Mac sauce might be equal parts mayo and BBQ sauce: try it on your burgers and let me know how it works out!

This recipe also reheats wonderfully. It's one of my "kitchen sink" recipes that I use when I have things left in the fridge that need to be used up. It's healthy and, despite having such simple ingredients, is surprisingly delicious. Brandon and I crave okonomiyaki every once in a while, and just HAVE to go grab a cabbage so we can put some together. ^_^