Hello ladies and gentlemen and welcome to Learning To Cook With Cooking Guide. Filmed in front of a live studio audience with me your host, The Squiggly Chef.
(loud clapping and woots)
Lets welcome today’s disaster in the kitchen, it’s self proclaimed cooking idiot, the ‘girl who can burn water’: Fran Shergold.
(Boo! Hiss!)
In this first exciting installment of many, Fran will be attempting to make the popular Japanese dish, Okonomiyaki, for the whole world to see and judge. It’s quite a tough dish to make and prepare.
This, ladies and gentlemen, is what one should look like. Just for later comparison to the abomination that Fran ‘If you cook well the first time they’ll expect you to do it for the rest of your bloody life’ Shergold will create later. ”
‘Okonomiyaki’, or ‘Oko-nummy yum yum’ for those of you who can’t pronounce it, is a Japanese savoury pancake containing what ever you want to put in it. ‘Okonomi’ basically means ‘what you like’ and ‘yaki’ means cooked or grilled.
Fran has no idea how to make such an odd looking creation, so to help her out she has been given a kitchen and a copy of Cooking Guide – Can’t decide what to eat? on Nintendo DS containing her very own squiggly drawn chef to talk her through the making of an Okonomiyaki – namely me. Lets get started!’
Hi I’m Fran. I can’t even cook a sandwich – of course now I know the bread goes on the outside. Nice to meet you all. It seems before I can do any cooking, I need to go and buy the specific Japanese ingredients, including Okonomiaki sauce and pickled ginger. So off to the ‘Tesco Express’ I go!
I needed eggs, spring onions and Chinese cabbage, – which Tesco’s had – I’m sure that Savoy is a region in Japan, right? Chinese Yam quickly became a sweet potato (they call them yams in the states). I needed 60 grams of Belly pork – which they only sold by the half kilo. I wasn’t able to get everything from the Tesco Express, but luckily I had some squid in the freezer (don’t ask) and some stuff I got when I was in Japan like Pikachu shaped dried seaweed (now with extra Pika Pee), Dashi soup stock (which is a Japanese fish stock) – although you could just use regular stock – or even a cube. And the new Chinese BBQ sauce that was half off in store actually tastes exactly like Okonomiyaki sauce – which was just as well, as they had sold out online at Japan Centre. Although Japan Centre did have pickled ginger – although it turned out to be pink, not red like the recipe asked. Where’s that food colouring?
To make it easy for you guys at home, my portable squiggly chef talks in bold type and myself is in plain and boring type. So I have my ingredients and my kitchen utensils. Lets see if I can make this blumming thing – without putting my DS in the blender to shut the irritating instructions up (put down in their entirety here – in bold type – for educational purposes).
Right, lets get started, the first step is to chop the ingredients. You will need a chopping board and a shape knife for this.
Yep, okay I have a knife, muhhahahaaha… err and a chopping board and I’m just going to get some cabbage lea…
Have you got all the utensils ready?
YES BLOODY HELL, HANG ON A SEC… okay I have the cabbage leaves.
First, peel off the required number of cabbage leaves one at a time.
Ok, well I have already done that part. Continue! Mr Chef!
Next, roughly chop the cabbage leaves.
What’s roughly chopped? I can only cut in straight lines, well anyway, let’s get chopping…
Slice the roots off the small spring onions and discard them, then roughly chop the spring onions.
WAIT! I haven’t finished chopping the cabbage leaves. GO BACK! Okay, lets continue chopping…
Slice the roots off the small…
STOP! GO… BACK! (Hmm, the sound of me chopping cabbage obviously sounds like me saying ‘continue’) STUPID CHEF!
Come again?…
CONTINUE!
Score the surface of the squid with a knife to make a lattice pattern with squares of about 4mm in size.
Score the squid? Well I guess I would give it a 6 out of 10 for presentation. Continue!
Next, cut the squid into broad strips about 1cm in width and 3cm in length.
Isn’t that just what I did? Oh, hang on, I see… err no I don’t… scoring was just a posh word for cutting. And what do I do with the squid heads? I feel bad leaving them on their own. Continue!
Next step is to grate the Chinese yam. Have a vegetable peeler, and vegetable grater and a dish ready.
I don’t have a Chinese Yam, but at least the DS doesn’t have eyes so you can’t see I’m using a Sweet potato. But I DO have a grater… hang on… where is the grater?
Have you got all the utensils ready?
NO!… Okay, found it. Continue!
Peel the Chinese yam with the vegetable peeler.
Okay, I’m peeling the sweet potato, slightly the wrong colour as it’s pinky orange and not white. Meh! And the plinky Japanese music is starting to annoy me.
Holding the grater over the dish, grate the Chinese yam onto it.
Hmm ok – the picture on the cooking guide shows the Chinese yam being cut really fine. I’m using the finest side on my grater, but nothing is coming out from the bottom of it, it’s just sticking to the tiny blades on the outside. And the other side of the grater is too big? Arrrgh… I will just have use the bigger size I guess… no one will know.
The next step is to prepare the batter for the pancakes. You will need a mixing bowl and a whisk for this.
Ooh! I didn’t know we were making pancakes!!! Cool!
What was that?
Nothing! Next!
Come again?
What? Err, I mean continue!
Put 55g of flour in th mixing bowl.
Okay, where are the scales… there we go, 73g of flour should be fine. Into the bowl… and onto floor it goes! Continue!
Next, break the eggs into the bowl and add 50ml of dashi soup stock and a pinch of salt.
Right I got the eggs. I am now breaking the eggs. OMG shock horror?!? No egg shell is in the bowl! Maybe I better put some shell in it before anyone comes in and thinks I can actually cook! Err, yes the 50ml of dashi stock. So do I need to mix the dashi soup powder in hot water first? No one told me I had to do this! Right well that looks like it could be 50ml of dashi soup stock, so in that goes and along with a pinch of salt. Ta daaaaa!
Put 55g of flour in the mixing bowl.
Hang on! How did putting a pinch of salt in a bowl sound like ‘go back’!
The next step is to prepare the batter for the pancakes…
WHAT! CONTINUE!
Put 55g of flour…
CONTINUE!!
Next, break the…
CONTINUE!!!
Add the grated Chinese yam.
I add the Chinese yam substitute, the sweet potato into the batter mixture. Very quietly so the squiggly chef doesn’t think I said ‘go back’.
Continue…
Mix the ingredients thoroughly with the whisk so the batter has no lumps.
Eeuuw, this stuff looks wrong. It looks nothing like the picture. Maybe if I keep stirring it will look better. Ooops did I say that out loud… continue.
Add the cabbage and spring onion to the batter and stir them in.
Adding the vegetables – I’m not even going to say what it looks like. Continue.
This completes the preparation.
The next step is to fry the batter. Have a frying pan and soup ladle and a fish slice ready.
Oh dear – that actually involves lighting a fire – I suppose I’d better go and get the extinguisher. And a fire blanket. And get my phone and type in 999 so all I have to do is press the call button… which means that you’ll all have to wait for part two of my Cooking Guide cooking guide… the cooking, and the finished dish!
(Booo!)
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