Okonomiyaki

Ingredients

• Cabbage — in 1 cm squares500 g
• Plain flour150 g
• Nagaimo yam — grated100 g
• Dashi120 ml
• Eggs4
• Pork belly — thinly sliced200 g
• Spring onion4
• Tenkasu tempura scraps40 g
• Okonomi sauceto taste
• Japanese mayonnaiseto taste
• Katsuobushi and aonorito taste
• Neutral oil3 tbsp

Salt and spices grow more slowly than the rest: doubling a dish does not double the pepper.

Weight converts to ounces and volume to cups. Grams of flour are not turned into cups, because that depends on how tightly it is packed.

Method

1. 1

   Mix the flour, grated yam and dashi and rest it half an hour in the fridge: the batter comes together better.

   32 min

2. 2

   Fold the eggs into the batter, then the cabbage, spring onion and tenkasu. Fold from underneath and briefly: the cabbage must not start weeping.

   6 min

3. 3

   Mound a quarter of the mixture onto a hot pan in a fifteen-centimetre round and do not flatten it: the air inside is wanted.

   3 min

4. 4

   Lay slices of pork belly on top and cook five minutes covered over medium heat.

   6 min

5. 5

   Turn it with two spatulas in one decisive movement and cook five minutes more, this time uncovered.

   6 min

6. 6

   Brush with okonomi sauce, pipe lines of mayonnaise and drag a cocktail stick across them. Scatter over katsuobushi and aonori.

   2 min

About the dish

There is more cabbage here than batter, and that is the point. The batter binds rather than carries: too much of it and you get a pancake with cabbage instead of cabbage in a pancake.

Grated nagaimo — Japanese mountain yam — makes the batter airy and moist. Without it okonomiyaki comes out dense; egg and baking powder partly stand in, but the texture differs.

The cabbage is cut into one-centimetre squares rather than shreds. Shreds go limp and mat together; squares hold air between them.

Worth knowing

• — Never press the pancake with a spatula while it cooks. That is exactly how the air the whole thing was built around escapes.
• — Okonomi sauce can be replaced by Worcestershire, ketchup, sugar and oyster sauce in equal parts.
• — Nagaimo is sold in Asian shops fresh and frozen already grated. The frozen kind works just as well.

Nutrition

Per serving at the base yield, calculated from the ingredients rather than measured in a lab.

Calories

560 kcal

Protein

24 g

Fat

32 g

Carbs

44 g

More from Japan

• Miso soup — A soup of dashi and miso that takes ten minutes. Miso must never boil: boiling takes out both the aroma and the point of it.
• Katsudon — A breaded pork cutlet finished in sweet-salt broth with egg and slid onto rice.
• Shoyu ramen — Broth, tare and oil — three separate things assembled in the bowl rather than cooked together.