Lest anyone think that we spend our winter days and nights lazily doing nothing (even if that’s mostly true), we figured that a weeknight dinner post would break the frigid February monotony.
Tonight, we made an easy weeknight standby: okonomiyaki. It might sound fancier than it is. Okonomiyaki is a savoury Japanese pancake, and it’s really a kind of anything-goes snack. But, in the right proportions, it makes a quick one-pot (or one-pan) dinner. That’s what we’ve decided, at least.
Okonomiyaki is made mostly with egg, flour, cabbage, dashi (a fish stock), green onions and some kind of meat or seafood. There’s also usually a grated yam called nagaimo, but we go without it.
We tend to wing our recipes, but the basic measurements are 2 cups of shredded cabbage, 3 chopped green onions, ½ cup of dashi, 1 egg, ½ cup of flour, and a good pinch of salt. Our meat was bacon, although pork belly is more traditional -- either will do (and they’re both pretty awesome, nah?). Shrimp or scallops are just as good, but a bit more finicky.
Start by frying the bacon in an oven-safe skillet, then crumble it and set it aside. Reserve some fat in the pan. Combine the dry ingredients (the cabbage, onions, flour and salt), and beat the egg into the dashi. Mix the two together, then add the crumbled bacon. The batter may seem a bit thick and dry (it’s mostly cabbage, after all), but it’s ready at this point: pour it into the pan and fry on medium heat until it starts to brown (5-10 minutes for us). At this point, you can either flip it (if you’re confident) and do the same on the other side, or stick it in the oven under the broiler. We go with the latter, lazy option.
When it’s done, you should top it with mayonnaise and okonomi or tonkatsu sauce (which you can usually find in an Asian supermarket, or make at home by… you know, googling it yourself). It’s also typically garnished with bonito and seaweed flakes. We throw on some roasted sesame seeds and fresh green onion, too.
We tell ourselves that this is a relatively healthy dinner because of the cabbage. The bacon says otherwise, but mehhh. Bacon is love, man.
And you know who else loves bacon? This little nut.
“Come on, you selfish bastards."