This is another post of Deliciouslogy Cooks!
Zoom in for the instructions and ingredients needed
After having okonomiyaki in its land of origin, there's no way that we were going to eat okonomiyaki anywhere else. It was just not possibly replicated back in Malahysia. But, we happen to come across a kiosk giving out samples of decent-tasting okonomiyaki at 1 Utama so homemade okonomiyaki became an agenda!
The pack comes with only the batter ingredients that you need. The okonomi sauce, Japanese mayo, bonito flakes, meat and vegetables will have to be purchased separately. Here's what the packs contained: the pink - yam powder, the green - seaweed powder, the yellow - tempura crisps. and the orange packet - okonomiyaki powder.
Following the instructions, you'd get a batter that looks like this. We decided to add in cubes of mozzarella just because cheese is always a good idea.
For simplicity sake, chicken was our choice of meat. Marinated in salt and pepper, it was stir fried then covered with some okonomi sauce. For vegetables, we passed on the spring onions and stuck with just cabbage.
It took many tries for the batter to achieve a pancake like shape and texture. It's was surprisingly hard to control - the cheese melted and stuck to the pan while the batter kept flowing away from the middle of the pan. It takes a while before the batter solidifies and it flowed away faster than I could shape it.
A lot of compressing was needed to keep all the ingredients together and ensuring everything stuck to each other. Flipping the okonomiyaki kept resulting in one okonomiyaki becoming messy okonomiyaki bits.
It was much easier to form smaller 'pancakes' but the actual okonomiyaki serving size is almost as large as our frying pan. We also lacked the equipment needed and should have used far less vegetable and meat. The next time we make this, I'm definitely going to shred the cheese and only add it on the top to melt when the okonomiyaki is fully cooked.
But wait, we found a burger patty/fried egg frying mold! Cooking became much easier but we still ended up with cute, small okonomiyaki. Flipping them over became easy but compressing all the ingredients was still required. I'd suggest trying this technique if it is your first time cooking okonomiyaki like us.
Taste-wise, it was nice. The texture on the inside was creamy and fluffy with a nice charred crust on the top and the bottom. Get more seaweed powder because that amount provided to you will not be satisfactory. With the sauce, mayo and bonito flakes, it was quite authentic!
It's no Osaka but for those who want okonomiyaki homemade at a fraction of the price charged at restaurants, this is a pretty good option. We had about 4 small okonomiyaki and 3 large horribly shaped ones so just with one pack, you could feed at least 2-3 people. It takes some time to get the hang of it but even for first timers like me, you'll eventually get it right.