Pan­cakes Oko­no­mi­ya­ki Style

I recently signed up again for Koch mein Rezept by Volker from Hamburg. In this blog event, participating bloggers are assigned another food blog by random draw. They then choose a recipe from that blog, cook or bake their own version of it, and at the same time introduce the original blog and its content to their readers.

The culinary lucky draw assigned me Kathrina’s blog Küchentraum & Purzelbaum. With her blog, she aims to take her readers into the world of baking and cooking. The focus is on simple, approachable recipes centered around dough, bread, and pastry, complemented by international recipes and seasonal ideas.

Kathrina loves everything that can be made from the basic ingredients flour, water, salt, and yeast, and has been showing on her blog since 2018 how these can be turned into versatile, everyday dishes. Her style is practical and encouraging — her recipes are meant to succeed without complicated techniques or hard-to-find ingredients.

If you enjoy baking and have a bit of talent, this is certainly the ideal blog for finding plenty of new inspiration. As it happens, I’m notoriously short on both, but I still found what I was looking for — because among the savory dishes there are some that don’t require baking at all. My choice fell on Japanese Pancakes – Okonomiyaki, which at least uses flour and baking powder.

Okonomiyaki are savory Japanese pancakes characterized by a dense, vegetable-filled batter. The name loosely translates to “grilled as you like it.” The ingredients are therefore flexible and adapt to whatever is available — perfect for the rainy Saturday when I didn’t feel like going out to shop.

Preparation

For the typical savory umami flavor, dashi broth is used in these pancakes. I made mine from instant dashi powder and hot water. Alternatively, you can use chicken broth, or if you’d like to make the recipe vegetarian, a vegetable broth or mushroom-based broth works just as well.

Next, we mix the batter. Whisk the eggs together with the broth of your choice in a large bowl. Then stir in the flour, salt, and sugar until a light batter forms. Place the batter in the refrigerator.

Then we begin preparing the vegetables. First, cut the pointed cabbage into fine strips. Peel the carrot and grate it coarsely. Cut the spring onions into rough rings. Finally, briefly rinse the mung bean sprouts and let them drain well.

Next, take the batter out of the refrigerator and fold in all the prepared vegetables until evenly distributed. Put the batter-vegetable mixture back in the refrigerator briefly.

In the meantime, prepare the sauce. Mix the Worcestershire sauce with the oyster sauce and soy sauce, and stir until a smooth, even sauce forms.

Now heat the vegetable oil in a pan. Once it is hot, add the batter and spread it into a round pancake that fills the entire pan. Fry the pancake for three to four minutes, until the bottom is golden brown and the surface begins to set.

Then carefully flip the pancake and fry the second side for another three minutes, until it is also golden brown and the batter is cooked through.

Transfer the finished pancake to a large plate. Decorate it with a lattice of sriracha mayonnaise. Cut the remaining spring onion into diagonal rings and scatter them over the lattice. Finally, sprinkle the whole thing with Shichimi Togarashi spice blend before serving the steaming hot pancake together with the sauce.