October 2, 2018

Another Japanese comfort food: Okonomi-yaki. “Okonomi” means whatever you want. “Yaki” means grill. So, it literally translates to “grill whatever you want.” The base is egg+flour batter and cabbage. Flour is actually not so crucial. In my case, I used chickpea flour because my wife prefers gluten-free. I’m not sure if any type of flour is needed. You could just use eggs—it would be like a frittata. At the end of the day, the dominant flavor comes from the okonomi sauce (the brown stuff you see in the photo) and the mayonnaise. The origin of the former, I believe, is Indian tamarind sauce. It tastes pretty much the same—in fact the Indian original is better.

Because I didn’t have any bacon or ground pork, I minced up Ikea meatballs. I also added shrimp. It came out pretty well

#okonomiyaki #お好み焼き #mayonnaise #tamarindsauce #japanesefood #comfortfood #shrimp #glutenfree #ikeameatball #chickpeaflour #nyceats #nycfoodie