A Mostly Japanese Meal - Sunomono and Okonomiyaki

Last Monday, I prepared a mostly Japanese meal, with help from my wife and my sister. The objective of this meal was to introduce a couple of Japanese dishes to my niece who will be moving to Japan with her husband for a tour with the U.S. Navy. We had three Japanese dishes and American desserts.

The main course was Okonomiyaki. It was accompanied by Miso Soup and Sunomono. The dessert was a non-Japanese combination of mango kiwi tart and cookies.

Okonomiyaki (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Okonomiyaki) is a wonderful dish that means something like "what you like - cooked." It is a sort of dinner pancake that can have a wide mix of ingredients - things like pork, shrimp, corn, bacon, potatoes, etc., etc.

There are at least two styles - one from the Osaka area and one from the Hiroshima area. The Hiroshima style adds a layer of noodles. I have never had the Hiroshima style. My wife, my daughter, and I have enjoyed Okonomiyaki many times when we lived in Japan.

Although my wife normally makes this dish at home, I tried making it on this occasion. It is very straightforward and relatively easy to make. We use a modified version of a recipe from a book entitled, "Japanese-Style Family Recipes" by Hiroko Urakami and published by Kodansha in 1992. The book was a gift from our daughter.

We modified the recipe by adding corn, omitting pork strips, using frozen salad shrimp rather than dried shrimp, and omitting dried bonito flakes/seaweed. (These modifications would all be fine in Japan.)

We also increased the amount of ingredients by to serve more people. The version below contains 25% less of all the ingredients than the version I made. The version below would probably serve six-eight diners.

There are many other recipes on various Internet sites.

Ingredients

3/4 cup all-purpose flour
12 eggs
1/2 head of cabbage
one 8 oz. package of small salad shrimp
one 11 oz. can of Del Monte Summer Crisp corn
12 tablespoons of Worcestershire Sauce
12 tablespoons of ketchup
mayonnaise

Preparation

Cut cabbage in half with core side down. Turn one half on its side and cut thin slices. Then cut the slices cross wise.

Mix the flour, eggs, cabbage, corn (drained), shrimp, and a couple of pinches of salt in a large bowl until they are well blended.

Mix the ketchup and Worcestershire sauce.

You can cook the mixture in a frying pan or on a hot plate.

Heat the hot plate of frying pan over medium low heat and spray some Pam or put some vegetable oil on the cooking surface.

Ladle a good sized scoop of the batter onto the cooking surface for each okonomiyaki pancake. We could do about 4 pancakes at once in a large frying pan.

Cook each pancake about 5 minutes on the first side. Then flip over and cook for another 2 minutes. You can tell when each side is done because it will brown.

Brush one side of each pancake with the ketchup-Worcestershire Sauce mix.

Keep the cooked pancakes warm in an over heated to about 200 degrees until all the pancakes are cooked.

Serve the pancakes hot.

Fill a dish with mayonnaise for those who want to top their pancakes with mayonnaise. (Most diners like this topping.)

Sunomono

This dish is tasty, healthy, and incredibly easy to make. I found the recipe at http://allrecipes.com/cucumber-sunomono/.

Ingredients

- 2 large cucumbers, peeled
- 1/3 cup rice vinegar
- 4 teaspoons white sugar
- 1 teaspoon salt
- 1 & 1/2 teaspoons minced fresh ginger root

Directions

1. Cut the cucumbers in half lengthwise and scoop out any large seeds. Slice crosswise into very thin slices.

2. In a small bowl, combine vinegar, sugar, salt and ginger. Mix well. Place cucumbers in the bowl and stir well so that cucumbers are coated with the mixture. Refrigerate the bowl of cucumbers for at least one hour before serving.

Miso Soup

We took the easy way out on this dish. We used Kikkoman instant Tofu-Spinach Miso Soup, which we purchased at an oriental store in the Gulf Gate area of Sarasota. Each package of this soup contains three individual packets of soup. For one serving, you put the ingredients of a packet into a small bowl and pour in hot water. It tastes very good if you like Miso Soup, which we do.

Dessert

My wife purchased the wonderful mango-kiwi tart and the cookies at Floribbean Flo's tropical bakery - http://floribbean.com/bakery.htm.