The post is all about the desire to find good okonomiyaki in Melbourne, after having had Hiroshima-style okonomiyaki in the past.  They heard about a place called Teppansan and headed straight over with their foodie hats on:

Being sophisticated travellers and food coinessuers, naturally we took our little monacles along with us, and our handy dandy mental notebooks to make an adequate (personal) review of the fine establishment, let me take you on a journey… to flavour town…

This little excursion doesn’t exactly go as well as hoped, which really just makes it all the more fun to read.  Sorry to hear about Melbourne’s lack of good okonomiyaki though!

Hey Aussies, if anyone should be able to make a good okonomiyaki in the English-speaking world, it’s you!  Get on it!  ^_^

DO NOT BE DISTRACTED BY THE SHINY RED BAR!

Okonomiyaki is the only food. THE ONLY FOOD.

Thank you.

Over at NipponPhile blog you can read about a group outing to a restaurant called Sakuratei, situated near the nifty Design Festa Gallery.

I’ve been there!  It’s a cool place, and you get to walk through the amazing fashion district of Harajuku to get there.

The gallery itself is affiliated with the Sakura Hostel of Asakusa, a place I heartily recommend spending some time at.  The cost is under 3000 yen (about $30) per night for any dorm bed, and the dorm rooms are actually pretty spacious with good privacy and access to your own power outlets.  Plus, free WiFi!  It was my favorite budget accomodation in Japan.

The best part about spending your nights in the Asakusa area of Tokyo: you’re about a 5 minute walk away from about 10 different places to eat okonomiyaki!  Hee hee.

Yup!  They do grow ‘em big in Kansai.  Wow. 

And in Japan, you really can’t take the food home with you.

Here’s a straightforward Kansai-style Okonomi-yaki recipe that is totally vegan and much more simple to follow.

Ingredients

makes 4 large pancakes

• 2 vegetable boullion cubes dissolved in 2 cups hot water
• 1 cup sweet potato flour
• 1/4 cup tapioca flour
• 1 cup flour (whole wheat and buckwheat work well)

Fillings:

• 2 c shredded cabbage or kale
• 1/2 c grated carrots
• 1 c parboiled chopped broccoli
• 4 Tbs beni shouga or finely grated fresh ginger
• any other nice veggie you have on hand
• sea salt and pepper to taste

Put dry ingredients into a large bowl and stir together.

Gradually add in the veggie boullion, stirring.  Stop adding liquid when the batter appears pancake-like (thick, not too runny but still pourable).

Stir in all the fillings you would like.

Heat up a non-stick griddle or frying pan over medium high heat with a little sesame or peanut oil.  (Any oil you like really, but those two are tastiest.)

When the edges look a bit brown, carefully flip the okonomiyaki over. Press down firmly, and lower the heat to about medium. Cook for at least 10 minutes, pressing down occasionally, until it’s thoroughly cooked through.

No problem!  Tapioca flour is the real magic goo here.  Sweet potato flour makes for a smooth and chewy texture that becomes a mesh between the tapioca and the regular flour.

Need help finding tapioca and sweet potato flour?  Amazon has good deals on vegan ingredients for okonomiyaki.

Over at 100yendinner, the lovely Kanmuri has posted her 100-Yen Okonomiyaki — precisely 93-yen actually — which even includes beef!  That’s pretty luxurious in Japan.  ^_^

Kanmuri’s 100-Yen Okonomiyaki Dinner:

Beef: 50¥
Cabbage: 25¥
Egg: 18¥
Total:93¥

• This is not the exact recipe for Okonomiyaki but it is my simpler version of it.
• In a bowl mix half a cup of flour with half a cup of water. Add an egg and mix well
• Mince cabbage (a little less than 1/5 of a whole cabbage) and add it to the mix.
• Put about a table spoon of olive oil in a fry pan. Add the mixture and fry the same way you would a pancake. Add thin slices of beef or pork on top.
• Once the the okonomiyaki starts to brown, flip it over and wait for the meat to be cooked.
• Transfer in a serving plate and add mayonnaise, okonomiyaki sauce and aonori (green seaweed flakes) and serve!

I noticed that flour and okonomiyaki toppings aren’t in the ingredient price list.  I suppose it’s assumed that most people already have these on hand.

But the cost of a tablespoon of mayo and a half cup of flour wouldn’t jack the price up all that much.  All totaled, maybe it would come to about 150 yen — still impressive.

Whether you buy your ingredients in yen, dollars, or pounds, go give Kanmuri’s recipe a try and tell us how it works out for you!

The ingredients are pretty much the same — it’s the technique that makes them distinct.

Okonomiyaki in the Kansai and Kanto regions (aka Osaka-style okonomiyaki) is created by first putting the batter and all of your fillings into a big bowl, and mixing it into a pasty, lumpy mass before shaping it all into a pancake in the pan.

Hiroshima-yaki, on the other hand, requires a progressive layering of ingredients.  It begins with a small circle of batter on the grill, after which comes a heap of cabbage and fillings, proceeding to a fresh egg cracked on top of it all which is allowed to trickle down through the fillings and sort of glue them together.

What happens next depends on the chef, the style, and the fillings.  But usually, after the cabbage has cooked down quite a bit, the chef drizzles on another thin layer of batter, and then flips it to cook on the other side.

The effect is to create sort of a stuffed pancake.  And because the fillings and the egg are not mixed homogenously, the layered and varied textures of the pancake create an enjoyably interesting eating experience.

  In Hiroshima there’s a famous okonomiyaki restaurant called Waka-Taka that boasts the best Hiroshima-style okonomiyaki.  They’ve been doing it for 40 years — that’s more than enough time to become masters of their craft, I think! ^_^

Right on their front page you can see a progression of pictures that shows you how they make theirs.  It looks almost easy!

Most people seem to do Kansai-Style Okonomiyaki since it’s a little easier.

Have you tried making your own okonomiyaki in Hiroshima style?  What are your experiences with it?

Please post comments — I’m eager to hear about other people’s experiences making Hiroshima-yaki.

Tired of buying pickled ginger at up to $6 a canister?  I was!  But I thought it wasn’t going to be anymore economical to buy the red shiso I would need to make the traditional beni shouga.

Then it hit me.  Literally — a beet fell out of a hanging basket in the kitchen and hit me on the side of the head.  

Beets!  Of course!  Bright red and ubiquitous.  (Where in the world can you not find beets?  I wonder!)

Later that day I went out and bought 2 pounds of ginger, arriving home eager to get started.  I decided to use raw apple cider vinegar and turbinado sugar, because I like the taste and I have a belief in the healthiness in of these things.  For salt I chose a large-grain sea salt I’ve had on hand for a long time.

Next came about an hour’s worth of ginger-peeling and shredding.  I listened to This Week in Science, so at least I learned something while I worked at it.

Into the bowl went all the ingredients (recipe below), including a whole beet sliced into 1/8-inch-thin long slices.  Within seconds of each beet slice hitting the liquid, the bright red color was already seeping out and colouring the ginger.

About two hours later, I had a huge bowl of bright red pickled ginger!  And some ginger-pickled beets, too!  ^_^

INGREDIENTS:

• 2 pounds raw ginger
• 1/2 cup sugar
• 1 whole raw beet (medium)
• 1/2 Tbsp sea salt
• 3/4 cup vinegar

Omega-3 oils are hard to come by in the modern diet, so sometimes you have to go the extra mile to fit them in — even when all you want to do is eat Okonomi-yaki!

Here’s an egg-free (vegan) flax seed-based mayonnaise rich in omega-3s that’s easily made in your blender.

Flax Seed Mayonnaise

• 1/4 cup ground flax seeds (about 1/3 cup whole)
• 1/4 cup warm water
• 2.5 Tbsp apple cider vinegar
• 1 tsp sea salt
• 1/2 tsp powdered mustard
• 1/4 cup avocado oil (or olive or walnut or what-have-you)

Blend ground flax seeds with water in a blender or food processor until thick. Add vinegar, mustard and salt, and blend.  With blender or food processor running, drizzle the oil in slowly to form an emulsion. Allow to cool before serving.

Coming soon: Actually Healthy Okonomiyaki?  Whole-Grain Okonomiyaki?  Is It Possible?

Stay tuned!!

Some restaurants don’t have instructions on how to make okonomiyaki, or the instructions aren’t in English.  Use these pictures and simple instructions in order to know ahead of time how to do it!

These are good pictures, and a picture is worth 1000 words.  If you have any confusion about how to prepare a Kansai-style okonomi-yaki, these photos will clear it up.

Very rustic looking but definitely OISHII-sou!  Well done.

If you feel like being an Okonomiyaki Perfectionist, on the other hand, you will find this video quite useful and amusing. ^_^

Thanks to Free Online Japanese Recipes for helping me find this clip!  As discussed on the blog, “here are some points from the video clip to cook a perfect okonomiyaki:

• When mix the flour and ingredients, be sure to let some “air” go into the ingredients
• Don’t over beat/mix to avoid moisture come out from cabbage
• Make the thickness around 3cm (Kansai-style Okonomiyaki) “