Wednesday, June 26, 2013

A Great Experiment...

Remember when I told you about Japanese Pizza, a.k.a. okonomiyaki? Last night was the experiment night...after reading a bunch of recipes, I settled on a basic plan--I would sauté shredded cabbage with onion and carrot. Coat it with a batter of flour and egg, salt and pepper. Fry it up, top it with green onion, hoisin and Kewpie Mayonnaise...Consume.

The general consensus? Mine was good, but not the same. My base was much heavier and not as crispy as the one we had at the sushi bar...and looking back at that photo in the link above, I can see how much more FRIED the one we had out was..

I aslo learned that in addition to the Kewpie mayo, there also exists okonomiyaki sauce. Now I must find both. (I made my own kewpie mayo from an online recipe here.)

Barb's Japanese Pizza (Refinements to come)

4 cups shredded cabbage
1/2 large onion, sliced thin.
1 tablespoon oil
1 carrot, grated
1 tablespoon fresh ginger, minced
1 clove garlic, minced
Splash soy sauce
1 teaspoon sesame oil

6 eggs
2/3 to 1 cup flour
S and P to taste

Oil for frying.

Thinly sliced scallions
Chopped cilantro
Almonds
Fried "crispies"
Kewpie Mayo
Hoisin Sauce

1. Saute the cabbage with onion in oil over medium high head. Add carrot and ginger and cook until cabbage is wilted. Add garlic and cook 1 minute longer. Remove from heat and stir in soy sauce and sesame oil.
2. Whisk eggs with flour to relatively thin batter. Add salt and pepper to taste.
3. Heat oil for frying in non-stick skillet over medium high heat. Drizzle in some of the batter to get the "crispies" to mix with scallions for the topping. Fry to golden brown and crispy. Remove from heat and drain. Crumble into bits.
4. Add cabbage mixture to batter. Stir to coat well. Heat oil again over medium high heat and place about 1/3 of mixture into skillet (about 9- or 10-inch skillet). Fry until bottom is golden brown. Flip pizza and cook second side.
5. Slide pizza out onto rack to cool slightly and drain any excess oil. Place onto cutting board. Top with scallions, cilantro, some sliced almonds
and bits of fried batter. Drizzle all with mayo and hoisin. Slice into wedges and enjoy.

2 comments:

Walker Thornton said...

It looks divine. I've never had or seen anything like this!
Love the name of your blog, by the way.

Babette said...

Walker, it amazes me when foodie things haven't even crossed my radar! And delights me, too!