It was one of those days when you get home rather tired and hungry, look into the larder and try to think of something simple yet exciting to make from whatever ingredients you have. We had plain flour, lots of cabbage, some parsnip, onions, eggs, leek and a long expired katsuobushi (bonito flakes) from a previous miso tofu pizza experiment.' Okonomi ' refers to 'what you like/want' and 'yaki' usually means 'grilled ' or 'fried'. The way we came to make this reminds me of the asian method of dealing with left over rice, frying it with any ingredients you can get your hands on... and also the english bubble and squeak, a panfried cake of left over potato mash and cabbage. And thus we settled on an okonomiyaki with the stuff we had, substituting seafood with dried ikan bilis (anchovies).
The crux of this recipe seems to be the consistency of the batter and also its topping! Not to mention the skill in flipping the rather dense cake over in a nice clean sweep! Depending on how you like it, our take on it was that it should be sticky enough to hold the ingredients together , not too voluminous nor runny. Our most suitable candidate for a topping for the dish appeared to be ketchup, which went quite well with the bonito flakes. The highlight was certainly the waving and fluttering flakes as we sprinkled them on the hot pancake!
Not quite gourmet, but homemade goodness made a very satisfying dinner enjoyed by us both. One of those simple moments when you can smile through each chew. A slightly charred crusty layer and a slightly bouncy juicy vegetable filling with the occasional chewy saltiness of the ikan bilis. mmm.. yummy! Happy improvising :)
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