Orion's Eyes

Saturday July 08, 2006

Okonomiyaki

Okonomiyaki is a Japanese dish that is basically a vegetable filled pancake and is sometimes called Japanese Pizza. The name means "Cook as you please" or "As you like it." In Japan it is pretty popular but  hasn't seemed to have made much of an impact in the US. I have been making them for a long time from a recipe in The Tassajara Bread Book by Edward Espe Brown. It was published in 1970 so you have an idea how long. I loved it but never gave it much thought because I thought Mr. Brown made up the recipe to feed the visitors to the Tassajara Zen Center.

Here is the recipe that I have been using.



O-Kinomi-Yaki
Japanese pancakes made with vegetables (and meat), can be served as midnight meal with warm reults. Americans put butter on everything; Japanese prefer soy sauce, but syrup no.
(For 5 people)

1/2 cabbage: Chinese, green or red
1 large carrot
1/2 onion: yellow or purple
3 celery stalks
(1/2 c meat or fish pieces, if desired, or whatever you have around)
2 c (or more) flour: whole wheat and unbleached white
1 egg, beaten
2 T brown sugar
1 t salt
1 tall can evaporated milk
Enough water to make batter

Chop, shred, dice or thinly slice vegetables and meat. Mix together remaining ingredients to form batter. Fold vegetables into batter and grill. May be eaten cold on the beach.
(c) 1970 Chief Priest, Zen Center, San Francisco


I now find that Okonomiyaki has an illustrious history and two distinct regional variations - Osaka and Hiroshima. The recipe above is a simplified version of the Osaka tradition. 

Senno Rikyu started serving Ishi-yaki, the ancestor of the modern Okonomiyaki at tea ceremonies in 16th century Japan. It was a batter of flour and water spread on a grill, cooked through, brushed with sweetened miso and rolled up like a crepe. Ishi-yaki was followed by Monji-yaki and Dondon-yaki. Cooking Dondon-yaki was so much fun that it became a very popular form of entertainment and gets its name from the fact that the cook would bang a drum outside the shop to attract young customers. As people kept adding more and more ingredients Dondon-yaki became our modern day Okonomiyaki.

The Osaka version starts out like my recipe with shredded raw veggies in a pancake batter. Then another layer of veggies or meat is fried in a pan as a patty and the batter is poured over it. Pieces of other things like seaweed flakes or tempura crumbles are then imbedded in the batter and the whole thing is flipped over.

Hiroshima Okinomiyaki is even more complex. It starts with a crepe-like pancake. Cover this with a thin layer of flaked fish and a thick layer of shredded cabbage, chopped leeks and bean sprouts. Then spread three slices of bacon over the top of this and flip it over onto the bacon side.  Fry an egg and put the whole thing, bacon side down, on top of the egg. This sounds way too complex and uninteresting to me.

I will stick with my simplified Osaka recipe. I like to make up a batch on the weekend and keep them in the refrigerator for lunch all week. A couple of CD sized pancakes and a soy sauce packet and I am good to go. I do vary the veggies seasonally. The recipe from the Tassajara Bread Book I consider my winter recipe since it uses veggies that are readilly available then. I just made a batch where I substituted zucchini, yellow squash, eggplant, and a green pepper for the cabbage to make a summer Okinomiyaki. Also, because of my recent studies, I put clusters of sliced mushrooms or corn kernels in the frypan and poured the veggie batter over them. Yummie!

My thanks to the following web pages for their help in learning the background of my simple veggie pancakes.

About.com's Japanese Cuisine
Tsujicho.com's Okonomi-yaki
JapanGuide.Com
WIKIPEDIA's Okonomiyaki
Darke Child's Okinomi-yaki
Greggman.com's Okonomiyaki
NIPPONIA's Okonomi-yaki
Joyful Hiroshima





Posted by orion Jul 08 2006, 05:08:34 PM EDT Permalink Comments [0]