What’s okonomiyaki and why should I make it? – Maki clack

I rather enjoy Japanese food of any persuasion, but I gotta say, I had never heard of okonomiyaki before Mothering Magazine published a recipe for it. What is it? A Japanese pancake or pizza. Now that can’t be bad, right?

Really, as you read the recipe for Mothering‘s okonomiyaki, you realize it’s probably better than pizza or pancakes. You basically cook pizza-type toppings right into the pancake. Um… yum! I hereby dub okonomiyaki: dinner pancakes. This particular recipe has chicken, napa cabbage, green beans, scallions, carrots, green pepper and zucchini, so it is really an all-encompassing meal.

I wanted to see what other combinations traditional okonomiyaki come in (and I was dying to find a dipping sauce since maple syrup just won’t cut it for these pancakes), so I perused the internet and found a bunch of fun recipes.

First off, let’s just say that using mayonnaise as a sauce is just completely unacceptable, as this site suggests, so I’ll be hunting for some of that tonkatsu sauce they also mention. What do you know? It’s as easy as blending Worcestershire, ketchup, mirin, ginger, garlic and this and that. Cool.

Now this okonomiyaki is looking a lot more like pizza, and definitely making my mouth water. But there’s that dreaded mayonnaise again — for the love of all that’s holy, don’t ruin a good thing….

Apparently, okonomiyaki is so addicting that there’s even a blog solely dedicated to the little Japanese pizza with big, big flavor. Even without the mayonnaise, I’m sure of it.

So, we’ve learned that okonomiyaki is an eggy, cabbagy pizza-ish food with a delicious sauce that needs no mayonnaise to make it great. I’m so sure I’m trying this as soon as we get some cabbage from our CSA farm (which I turned down today in lieu of chard… bah.