Hello! Hi everyone, Wesley here. Today we are diving back into our series dedicated to classic Japanese dishes with a shot at a Japanese savory pancake known as okonomiyaki. Though you will find that savory pancakes appear all throughout pan-Asian cuisine (such as the Korean kimchi pancake or the Taiwanese scallion pancake), okonomiyaki stands apart because of its inclusion of a dried and smoked tuna fish shaving known as "katsuobushi," or bonito flake. This as you might imagine, gives the dish a smokey and fishy umami forward quality that is very much in line with...pretty much all of the Japanese cuisine that you've probably come across. 

Unlike many of its contemporaries though, our pancake will be assembled into a batter (rather than a dough ball), making use of the tuber known as nagaimo, or sometimes mountain yam or Chinese yam, to yield a slimy and sticky texture which is absolutely unlike any other yam that I personally have ever come across. These yams are...weird y'all. In addition to this, the okonomiyaki is also iconically fried on top of a bed of pork belly or bacon strips to give the dish that classic "cooked-in-bacon-fat" feel that we all want in a pancake. Hope you try it. 

 

Serves 2-3

INGREDIENTS

  • 8 strips bacon

  • kewpie

INGREDIENTS

  • 1/4 head cabbage

  • 4 green onions

  • 6 oz mountain yam

  • ~1/4 oz bonito flake

  • red ginger

  • 1 cup AP flour

  • 1 cup dashi stock

  • 4 eggs

  • kosher salt

INGREDIENTS (sauce)

  • 4 tbsp low sodium soy sauce (or 2 tbsp full sodium soy sauce)

  • 2 tbsp oyster sauce

  • 2 tbsp ketchup

  • 1 tbsp worcestershire sauce

  • 2 tbsp honey

PREP

  • SLICE the cabbage thinly, then add to a large mixing bowl

  • SEPARATE the whites and greens of the onions, then slice the whites thinly and add to the mixing bowl

  • SLICE the greens of the green onions thinly, then set aside

  • PEEL the mountain yam, then grate into the mixing bowl

  • ADD the bonito flake, AP flour, dashi stock, eggs, red pickled ginger and a pinsh of kosher salt, then mix until a loose batter forms

  • COMBINE all sauce ingredients, set aside

ON THE STOVE

  • ADD 4 strips of bacon in a cold skillet, then ADD 1/2 of the batter and let the pan gradually heat over medium heat

  • RENDER the bacon fat for 2-5 minutes, then remove the excess fat with a spoon and flip using a large plate

  • FRY for an additional 2 minutes, then remove

  • FINISH with kewpie, okonomiyaki sauce, green onions, bonito flake and pickled ginger

 

tagged with okonomiyaki, japanese pancake, japanese savory pancake, bonito flake, katsuobushi, japanese food, japanese cooking, japanese recipe, woo can cook