Last week I saw these Japanese Vegetable Pancakes over at the smitten kitchen blog and was immediately intrigued. While I had never heard of Okonomiyaki, the traditional name of this dish, it looked like an Asian-style latke. I tend to love Asian flavors and also am a big fan of latkes, so I figured I would probably like these.
WELL. They completely exceeded my expectations! Mark was also pleasantly surprised at how flavorful and delicious these were. The main ingredients are lots of vegetables (cabbage, carrots, kale, scallions) and eggs. There is also an Asian flavored BBQ sauce to go on top. As you can see from the picture, I made these large (1 per person). I served a little bit of salmon on the side for extra protein which I think was good, although these were quite filling on their own (each large pancake has 1+ eggs in it).
These also made great leftovers. Just reheat/recrisp the pancakes in a toaster oven and you are good to go. Overall this is a fun way to eat a lot of vegetables. We will definitely make these again. I'm not reposting the recipe here because I didn't change it much. Look below for a link to the recipe and my notes on it.
Japanese Vegetable Pancakes
serves: 4
For the recipe, go to smitten kitchen.
My Notes:
1) I used less salt in the pancakes- probably 1/4 to 1/2 teaspoon. The sauce is quite salty so you really don't need that much salt in the pancakes.
2) The pancakes are great on their own, even without the sauce. Feel free to skip the sauce or drizzle on another appropriate sauce.
3) If you do make the sauce... I didn't have ketchup so I used BBQ sauce. I thought it turned out well, but I also don't know what it is "supposed" to taste like. Also, if you are making these vegetarian, remember that Worcestershire sauce is usually not vegetarian.
4) I cooked these in coconut oil, mostly because that's what I had. It gave the pancakes a very mild coconut flavor which I thought was great.
I saw these on Smitten Kitchen and made them last week too! They were perfect for using up all the ingredients we can't seem to get rid of from our CSA.
ReplyDeleteI made little ones (Japanese-latke size) and cooked them in peanut oil (tasty, but probably not too healthy). I didn't end up making the sauce, mostly for lack of ingredients, but mixed up some sriracha mayo instead and it was delicious.
I told Mark this on Friday, but I'm looking forward to summer in large part because I'll have time to make all of the recipes I've starred from your blog!
That's so funny that you saw these and tried them too! So yummy! Did you end up varying the vegetables based on what you had leftover from your CSA? It seems like these would work well with lots of different vegetables. Also... yay for summer! So sad to have missed seeing you last week.
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