Comedy cooking with friends

Back home again after a fab time in Japan we thought we share our experiences with our friends. So on Saturday we invited Rob & Is for a Japanese dinner. The plan was to cook okonomiyaki and drink our specially imported sake. Okonomiyaki was one of the many Japanese
dishes we tried in Japan and is best described as a pancake with cabbage, meat or fish.

After some googling I came up with two recipes. We decided to go for Hiroshima-style which means that noodles are added to the mix. After spending some time working out what needed to be done I called the gang into the kitchen and started the delegation.

Ian became in charge of frying noodles (and yes some of them did catch fire...), Is was sorting out the gyoza and Rob and I were frying two cabbage pancakes with thinly sliced pork on top.





Here starts the comedy: once the pancakes had fried on one side for awhile we had to flip it over! In true team spirit two of us equipped with a total of three spatulas managed to flip both of them over without incident. Stage one completed! Next we transferred the pancake and pork (which at this stage is at the bottom) on top of the fried noodles. First one was a bit tricky and needed a little bit of rescuing. By the second, we had got the hang of it.

Third step involved a fried egg which the noodles and pancake were placed on top of. So far so good!

Now all we needed to do was to flip the whole thing over onto a plate. Ian was a hero and flipped them both without either dropping them on the floor or burning his fingers.









By just adding some Worcester sauce and mayo our two okonomiyakis were ready to be served! And delicious they were!






Good work team! The sake was well deserved after these difficult maneuvers...!








Sunday we closed the kitchen and went to Putney to see Jelte and Linda's new flat and have a pub lunch. Which due to Jelte's brilliant planning ended up to be dinner instead. The table hadn't been booked until 18:00... Oooops!