Okonomiyaki!

I've blogged about okonomiyaki before - when we went to Japan. We ate as much as we could. ;) It's a savoury pancake with cabbage and pretty much any other vegetable under the sun in it. Okonomi means "what you like" (roughly) and yaki means fried. When you're at an okonomiyaki restaurant in Japan, you can choose from a vast list of ingredients. In its normal form, okonomiyaki is neither clean nor allergy friendly. It is made with eggs, fatty cuts of meat and it's fried in copious amounts of oil. Then you smother it in a sweet vegetable/worcester sauce and mayonnaise. MMMM!


I love okonomiyaki. But, with an allergic kid and a waistline that has expanded just writing about it, okonomiyaki is not a wise choice in our house. So, I came up with an alternative that is probably a bit sacrilegious, but yummy enough to be a good alternative. 

As I said, it's a savoury pancake, so I started with my egg-free standard pancake, with some modifications to make it savoury:

1 cup flour (I used whole wheat - that is so not standard!) 

2 tsp baking powder (As I wrote this I realized that we've been using 2 tablespoons all along! Oops!)

1 cup dashi*

1 tbsp vegetable oil

1 tbsp milk or water (in our house, we use hemp milk for K)

Vegetables:

- cabbage (a must - a usually buy the coleslaw kits as the cabbage is already chopped to the perfect size. You can always chop your own cabbage too!)

- corn

- zucchini (I shredded it)

- carrots (also shredded)

- tuna (ok, that's not technically a vegetable)

- pork (hmm...maybe I should have called this section "ingredients"; no pork this time, but it's a common ingredient, usually in thin strips)

*Dashi is a Japanese soup stock. It can be made from a number of things, including fish and seaweed. It gives the pancake a more authentic taste. Chicken stock or water can be used as well. 

As with a typical pancake recipe, combine the dry stuff first, then add the wet stuff, being sure not to overstir. 

Add the chopped/shredded veggies (and tuna) to the batter and stir only long enough to coat the vegetables. There should be more veggies than batter - although, there are no hard and fast rules. Spoon about 3/4 cup of batter onto frying pan and cook as you would a pancake - wait until it begins to be cooked on the sides, and flip. If using pork, it is placed on the top of the batter and fried. 

Serve immediately! Usually, it is topped with Japanese worcester sauce (Otafuku and Bull dog are the main brands)  and mayo, but we left that off of K's. We gave him some ketchup instead. :) It's also good topped with powdered seaweed and bonito flakes. 

Mmmm....okonomiyaki!

So there you go - a healthier, allergy friendly okonomiyaki!

Blueberry Coffee Cake

My first food entry! I made this because we were having some guests over for dinner (although they brought the dinner - yummy, yummy maki rolls. Mmmm...I'll post them later.)

This recipe comes from The Allergen-Free Baker's Handbook (AFBH) by Cybele Pascal. I have made three recipes from this book and the two cake recipes have turned out fabulously! This book is written for many allergies, including gluten. K's allergies are milk, eggs and peanuts (confirmed) and a suspected sesame (this one is all but confirmed since he had an emergency trip after eating hummus) and we think maybe soy, but we can't be sure because we're too chicken to try after said trip to hospital.

So, those are my criteria when cooking - no dairy, eggs, peanuts, sesame or soy. Ack! You can see why I wouldn't willingly add another no-no to the list! I followed the recipe in AFBH quite closely, except for the gluten free part. I used regular flour. Here are the ingredients, with my modifications in brackets.

Blueberry Boy Bait (not a fan of the name, so I just call it coffee cake!)

2 cups Basic Gluten-Free Flour Mix (I used white and whole wheat flours - she provides a recipe for gluten-free flour in her book.)


1/2 teaspoon xanthan gum (used to mimic gluten - I omitted because I was using wheat flour)


1 tablespoon double-acting baking powder

1 teaspoon salt (hmmm....I believe I omitted this, but only because I missed it when reading the recipe. Oops!)


3/4 cup dairy-free, soy-free vegetable shortening (This is, like, impossible to get in Canada. So I used Becel RSF which very clearly specifies that it is not to be used for baking. Another oops.)


3/4 cup firmly packed light brown sugar

1/2 cup granulated sugar

4 1/2 teaspoons Ener-G egg replacer mixed with 6 tablespoons rice milk (This brand is an American one. I use PaneRiso brand egg replacer. So, I work backwards and try to figure out how many eggs should be used and then use the appropriate amount of egg replacer. Difficult.)


3/4 cup rice milk (I used vanilla flavoured.)


1 cup fresh or frozen blueberries tossed with flour or flour mix (Oops. Another step I missed! I will add more blueberries next time - maybe half a cup more.) 


1/4 cup granulated sugar mixed with 1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon (I left out the cinnamon because the boys both hate it. I love it. Sad. I also found 1/4 cup to be a LOT. Half that would do, I think!)


Here's the egg replacer I used, for my Canadian peeps (which, as far as I know, are all the peeps I have!)



1. Preheat the over to 350 F. Grease 9 x 9 pan and sprinkle with a little [gluten-free] flour mix, tapping out any extra.

2. Whisk together the flour mix, [xanthan gum], baking powder and salt. Set aside.

3. In the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with a paddle attachment, combine the shortening (margarine), brown sugar and granulated sugar. Mix on medium-high speed for 2 minutes or until fluffy.

4. Add the egg replacer and mix for about 20 seconds.


5. Reduce the speed to medium and beat in one-third of the flour, mixing for 15 seconds.

6. Add half the rice milk, mixing for 20 seconds.

7. Beat in half the remaining flour, then the remaining rice milk, and finally the remaining flour mixture, scraping down the sides of the bowl as necessary.


8. Add half of the batter to the pan, spreading evenly across the bottom of the pan. Sprinkle with half the blueberries. Top with the remaining batter, spreading it as evenly as possible across the blueberries. Top with the remaining blueberries, then sprinkle with the [cinnamon]-sugar mixture.

9. Bake in the centre of the over for 1 hour, until the [cinnamon]-sugar mixture has begun to caramelize and the top is golden. Let cool in the pan for 30 minutes before turning out onto a serving platter or just serve out of the pan. Serve warm or at room temperature.

Yummy, yummy!