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!

From Kanazawa to Tsujido

On our last day in Kanazawa, Yui’s uncle, Akio, took us through the temple that is attached to their home. The temple has a lot of history and is linked to the Maeda family - a famous samurai family from that area. I can’t really tell you more as I didn’t understand any of the story and it was difficult for Yui to translate. Akio-san took us from the altar into the “realm of the priest” or the area behind the altar where normally only priests are allowed to go. This area had statues of the deities associated with that “sect” of Buddhism. There are so many layers of teacher and student in Buddhism; it is difficult to keep track of who taught whom. I think I would have to take a course to keep it all straight!
After the tour, we had to make our way to the station. We had the longest train ride of the trip ahead of. Having learned a few lessons the last time, though, we sent the luggage ahead of us via a delivery company and we made darn sure we knew exactly where all the cars were stopping! Saying good-bye to Aunt Yoshiko was a bit more emotional for both of us than we thought. I’ve said good-bye to family before, but never to family that lives so far away.
The trip took us to Tsujido, a surburb of the suburb Yokohama. Yui’s Aunt Yuko lives in Tsujido wth her husband Shoji and her daughter Yumiko. Sachiko came to meet us at the station with her husband Tomoteru. The train ride took up a big part of the day, so there wasn’t much time to do anything when we arrived in Tsujido - or so we thought! In Japan, you can always squeeze in more things to do! Before going to Aunt Yuko’s, we went to visit another cousin that Yui hadn’t seen for nearly 20 years! We spent some good time chatting, catching up and of course, eating!
The eating contiued when we finally arrived at Aunt Yuko’s and ate some more okonomiyaki! Aunt Yuko’s third daughter, Tomoko, was cooking okonomiyaki for us on the hotplate in their living room. Tomoko, by the way, is a brain surgeon. For what may have been the first time in my life, I refused food. :O We had eaten cookies at Mitsuteru’s, and then he brought out dessert, so after a couple pieces of okonomiyaki, I was SO FULL!
After dinner, jet-lag was setting in quite heavily so it was time to make our way upstairs (where our luggage was patiently awaiting us!) to settle in for the night. Once more, we were treated to Japanese style accomodations, including cuddly, warm feather duvets. Mmm...zzzzzzzzz

Today's photos

ジェン

到着 Arrival

MARCH 11 & 12, 2008

It’s a long ride. There is no way around it. 18 hours travel time, and at least 14 of those in the air. It’s a long ride. It started at 8 AM on March 11th and ended at 5:45 PM on the 12th - local time. With all the time zones, who knows what the actual time was. And you’re not supposed to think about that anyway. We may have slept for 2 hours at the most, but it was very difficult with no leg room and a plane FULL of children and many of them crying.

One of my old students, Tomomi, met us at the airport in Osaka and took us to our hotel. We had a map. We thought we’d be okay. If Tomomi hadn’t met us, we might still be looking for our hotel. We dropped off our stuff and off to お好み焼 (okonomiyaki) for dinner. I had been dreaming about okonomiyaki for 6 years - and Tomomi remembered me talking about it. Sweet girl! The hotel was pretty nice - quiet considering its location and a decent amount of space for Japan. And a WICKED bathtub. The best one of the trip. :)

At this point we were feeling a mixture of exhaustion and extreme excitement. Everything was new and different and I think we were both looking for familiar sights and sounds. (I know I was!)

ジェン