Okonomiyaki. It was the last snack we ate on our trip to Japan and one I find myself craving and making again and again! Osaka style Okonomiyaki  is a delicious, filling, savory Japanese pancake that in my opinion is the most satisfying way to eat cabbage and use up assorted leftover vegetables in your fridge. Just like nearly everything else in Japan, there is no one or right way to make Okonomiyaki, and it will vary from city to city and vendor to vendor, but that’s true for so many things all over the world, be it pizza or burger  or curry. In a nutshell, it’s savory, it’s a pancake, and it’s absolutely loaded with toppings/fillings.

There are two main, distinctly different styles of Okonomiyaki, and those are the Hiroshima style and the Osaka Style Okonomiyaki (sometimes also called the Kansai style). In the former, the ingredients are layered onto the batter which is poured first, and in the latter, everything is mixed together before being placed on the grill. There is also a Tokyo style which is like the Osaka style but considered done while it is still a little molten, this one is called Monjyaki. The one thing that seems to be a constant is lots of shredded cabbage.

While Okonomiyaki dates back to as early as the Edo period (1683-1868), it was during and after World War II that it truly gained its widespread popularity.  In the Edo period, it started out as a crepe-like dessert. It evolved into a sweeter dish called Sukesoyaki during the Meiji period (1868-1912). During the 1920s and 1930s is when the savory evolution began, with greater emphasis being placed on the sauces and the toppings and it was in the late 1930s that the term ‘Okonomiyaki’ was coined in Osaka. No surprise there, for Osaka is Japan’s kitchen and culinary capital, after all. Like most things delicious, Okonomiyaki was a product of necessity, when rice became scarce.

Kitchen Notes:

• Chop your cabbage with a sharp knife, never shred in a food processor. The juices will bleed out if you use a high-speed processor or a grater, and you don’t want soggy cabbage
• Don’t cut your cabbage too finely. You want pieces that are at least 1/2 cm thick and a few sms long, so that even as it cooks and softens, it still maintains some crunch
• In addition to the cabbage, the rest of the fillings are really a case of the ‘the world is your oyster’. I’ve seen entire menus of the possible fillings to choose from, and because we’re Halal-conscious, we always end up choosing the seafood fillings and that’s just how I’ve come to know and crave okonomiyaki: packed with seafood. You could make it entirely vegetarian too, if you wanted to.
• Kewpie Mayo, Okonomiyaki sauce and katsuboshi (bonito flakes) are standard toppings for Osaka Style Okonomiyaki and I can’t imagine it any other way
• The recipe I’m sharing yields one Osaka Style Okonomiyaki, that is easy enough to flip. I tried doubling this recipe once to make a bigger pancake and it broke apart in my attempt to flip it.

Yield: 1 Okonomiyaki pancake

Pancake Ingredients:

• 1/2 cup flour
• 1/2 cup water
• 1 egg
• 2 Tbs chopped scallions (the white ends only)
• 2 big handfuls or 4 cups of chopped cabbage
• 1/2 cup chopped seafood of choice (or any cooked meat, cheese, vegetable, you do you)
• 1 Tbs soy sauce
• 1 Tbs pickled ginger (optional)
• 1/4 cup chopped yam or Nagaimo

 

Garnishes and Sauces:

• 2 Tbs scallion slices (green ends)
• 3 Tbs Okonomiyaki sauce* (but there’s really no limit to how much you can drizzle on)
• 1 Tbs Katsuboshi (bonito flakes)
• 3 Tbs Kewpie mayo (again, you do you and don’t let anyone tell you how much Kewpie you can drizzle on)
• 1 tsp Nori flakes

Method:

1. Mix the egg, flour, and water, in this order, one at a time, in order to prevent lumps.
2. Mix in all the other pancake ingredients (not the garnishes)
3. Place onto hot nonstick or cast iron pan, and using a spatula, bring any bits of ‘escaped’ batter back in towards the pancake. I like to first place and form a circular shape with some of the cabbage and then pour the liquid bits of the batter on at the end, so as to minimize the ‘escaping and spilling’, as I know it’ll trickle down through the fillings anyway
4. Cook on medium-high heat for 5-7 minutes, and then using two spatulas as extentions of each of your hands, carefully lift and swiftly flip. Cook on the other side for another 5-7 minutes.
5. Garnish with drizzles of Kewpie, Okonomiyaki sauce, Katsuboshi (bonito flakes) and freshly slices scallions

*You can make 1/2 cup Okonomiyaki Sauce by mixing  5 Tbs ketchup, 3 Tbs Woscestershire sauce, 2 Tbs Oyster sauce, and 1 Tbs sugar.