Friday, August 23, 2013

OKONOMIYAKI - Vegetarian style or with meat (Japanese vegetable pancake)

OKONOMIYAI is one of my childhood favorites.  It just bring back the wonderful memory of after a good hot bath at the Japanese bath house  - OFURO YA SAN  -- sitting around the Teppan and watch it being prepared in front of you.

Ingredients:
1 Cup of shredded veges of all sorts that you love.   I just bought a bag of shredded broccoli vege mix.

1 Cup Shredded Cabbage
2  chopped green onions
Your favorite meat varieties - chopped meat, small steak pieces, shrimps, chopped KAMABOKO, fish cakes cut into pieces, chicken pieces, etc.
1/2 C flour
1 egg
1/2 C water
salt & pepper to taste

Japanese OKONOMIYAKI sauce, or TONKATSU sauce  or your favorite BBQ sauce and any sauce you like
Dry seaweed -- NORI -  flakes or sheet of dry seaweed torn apart in to small pieces, Bonita flakes.

The amount of veges are all up to you and flour and water mixture is all measured visually.
Shred cabbage and your favorite veges - e.g. onions, spinach, carrots, broccoli.   At least all the veges that produce less water.

Technique:
Break up the egg in a bowl, mix in flour and water - the consistency is thin batter mixture.
Add all the shredded veges and chopped onions and chopped fish cakes and mix well.

Pre-heat the fry pan and add oil.  Once the oil is shimmering, add a nice big scoop of vege mixtures.  Flatten them with the back of the scoop or spatula.   Top with Meat or Shrimp, etc.


Tip:  If the vege pancake is quite large -- as I tend to make my personal preferred size - Cover with lid and cook.  Turn it over when the bottom is nicely browned. 
The proportion is up to you visually.  If larger and thicker (in height) the mixture, the better method is to cover the fray pan.  No need to cover for the smaller size.

Turn over and cook the other side.
Serve with NORI flakes, Bonita flakes, and drizzle with your favorite sauce.



If you have an electric Griddle, that is an ideal way to prepare the OKONOMIYAKI at the table top. 
Enjoy!

Look Who Has been Cooking!

Oh, Wow!   I have been offline for a while, and I checked my daily connection to see who has been cooking and Wow!.  Maha has just been cooking up a storm! 
How delicious all these food sound.   Hope you can visit some of my favorite bloggers' sites and find out what they have been cooking - Happy Cooking!















Thursday, July 25, 2013

NecPear Puff - Home grown Nectarine and Japanese Pear baked in Phyllo pastry

This year, my garden has a fewer crops then the previous years.  Either I did not prep the soil correctly or the weather temperature is just too crazy.   There are no tomatoes growing, yet.  The corn that grows heartily did not even show up.  The young nectarine tree, however, had some 15 fruits that I appreciate, and my 20 feet tall "dwarf 21st century Japanese Pear" had some fruits.  So, I sliced them up, added some stuvia sugar, potato starch, wrapped them in buttered Phyllo pastry sheets, and voila!, NecPear Puff!