The origin: Japan
The Cuisine: The real secret of this dish is it’s all about using up leftovers. Tuna, bacon, crab sticks, shrimp, whatever you happen to have leftover, can be used to add bulk and flavor to the pizza. It reminds the Spanish fritata rather than a pizza.
For easily cooked items like tuna, add them to the cabbage batter mix; for more difficult items like bacon, fry them first then pour the cabbage batter mixture over the top. Otherwise youâll end up with overcooked cabbage and undercooked bacon. Dashi is used to flavor the batter, but fish or chicken stock, or chicken seasoning powder in water can also be used. Without flavoring, you have only plain cabbage flavor, so itâs worth adding something. The dark sauce on the top, Okonomiyaki sauce, is similar to barbecue sauces. If you need to make a substitution, a strong deep barbecue sauce can be used.
Ingredients
60 gm Flour
70 ml Dashi or fish stock
1 Egg
150 gm chopped cabbage
50 gm chopped carrots
20 gm chopped spring onion
30 gm crabsticks
30 gm chopped shrimp
2 bacon chopped
1 sheet dried seaweed
Dried fish flakes (Katsuo Bushi or Similar)
Mayonnaise
Okonomiyaki Sauce
Process
1. Mix flour, egg and stock together until it forms a smooth batter. The batter should be thick enough to stick to the cabbage, adjust the flour as necessary.
2. Finely chop the cabbage and mix into the batter.
3. If you are using leftovers that are already cooked or easily cooked, mix those in with the batter.
4. Heat a frying pan with a little oil.
5. Partially fry the bacon pieces, add the shrimp just to lightly cook them — they will cook more once you’ve added the cabbage mixture.
6. Spoon on the cabbage batter mixture over these shrimp and bacon pieces to form a round pizza disc with the bacon on the bottom of it.
7. Fry it on a low heat with a lid, after you finish cooking the bacon and shrimp. Lift the base with a spatula to check it’s not burning.
8. Now the difficult part – turning it over without breaking it! You can slide it out onto a plate, then tip the plate over back, into the pan.
9. Repeat the cooking process on the other side, fry with a low heat covered with a lid to brown off the other side of the pizza, lift it with a spatula to check how it’s browning.
10. Take it out and place it on a serving plate bacon side up.
11. Next, Oknonmiyaki traditionally has a grid of sauces over it. Then pipe it in a criss-cross pattern over the pizza.
12. Squeeze the mayonnaise out over the pizza in a criss-cross pattern, too.
13. Cut the seaweed into very fine strips and sprinkle over the top of the pizza.
14. Sprinkle the dried fish flakes over the top.
15. Serve immediately.
Ingredients for Okonomiyaki Sauce
3 tablespoons tomato ketchup
4 tablespoons Worcestershire sauce
3 tablespoons dark soy sauce
1 teaspoon sugar
Process
1. Put everything into a pan over a low heat, and stir until the sugar has dissolved and some of the vinegar in the Worcestershire sauce has boiled away.
2. Leave to cool before piping it. It will become thick when it cools and if it’s not thick enough cook some more time.
Why you should try it?
One should definitely try it because this pizza is a twist to the regular Italian pizza that we consume frequently. Eating this Japanese pizza will help one to realize that pizza are not made in Italy only but in other parts of the world as well, Moreover, this is a wholesome yet delicious preparation to fill one’s stomach.