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Okonomiyaki at a Hiroshima restaurant |
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Okonomiyaki mid process on a hot plate |
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Our KKC group making Okonomiyaki in Hiroshima |
One Japanese food dish from the my recent trip to Japan deserves its own blog post – Okonomiyaki. Wikipedia describes okonomiyaki as “a Japanese savory pancake containing a variety of ingredients and is derived from the word ‘okonomi’ : what you want and ‘yaki’ : grilled”. My host family prepared it for me during my home stay and then we visited a restaurant as a group where we prepared one for ourselves on a hot plate which sat in front of us.
The okonomiyaki is a mixture of batter, cabbage, pork and optional items including squid, octopus and cheese. On top of this combination are placed noodles, a fried egg, okonomiyaki sauce and mayo. My host family also sprinkled the finished plate with dried tuna shavings and dried seaweed. The dish is most popular in the Kansai and Hiroshima areas. Different regions have different proportions of ingredients. The mixture is fried on a hot plate and turned over several times like a pancake with spatulas. It was relatively easy to eat with chopsticks and has so many ingredients it is easy to find something that everyone likes.
Hi Mr. Langhorst
ReplyDeleteMy name is Ramsey Willis and I am in Dr. Strange's EDM 310 class. I read your post on 2011 Keizai Koho Center Fellowship - Okonomiyaki and found it quite interesting. I love to eat and will try just about anything. I thought this dish was very interesting because it contained so many ingredients yet looked relatively easy to create. Basically, it looks to me like an omelet made with unconventional ingredients.
I have a couple of questions about the dish based on your blog and more research I've conducted. Depending on your responses I may try and make the dish one day. The first and most important question is: How did it taste? Secondly, I would like to know what your thoughts are on preparing the dish.
It appears as though you made the dish Hiroshima style. I was looking at an article about Okonomiyaki on www.japanguide.com and they showed how to make the dish Kansai (Osaka) style. Have you tried creating this dish Kansai style since you returned home or while you were there? Sorry, I have so many questions but since I like trying all types of new foods, I wanted to know if this dish would be worth trying.
Finally, I would like to leave you with my contact information and thank you for taking the time to read my comment. You can find me on twitter @rambo7997 or my blog at http://willisramseyedm310.blogspot.com/. The link to the class blog is http://edm310.blogspot.com/and I will be summarizing my visits to your blog with a post to my blog on September 11, 2011.
Hello Mr. Langhorst,
ReplyDeleteI am a student of EDM 310 at University of South Alabama and I would like to start off by saying that your videos made me hungry. The okonomiyaki looks very good indeed. I ma glad you were able to show this and post in on your blog. It adds a new and exciting dish to my food recipes. It is also great to learn from different cultures. I love history, I think it is a great subject. Very interesting and informative. This video makes me want to travel to Hiroshima to try this out. Thank you Mr. Langhorst.