Storebought
takoyaki
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Takoyaki is octopus dumplings. Yep, little
balls of dough with bits of octopus
inside. They're tricky to cook, so if
you're a beginner you might want to follow
the most common recipe: Go to an Asian
grocery store and buy a bag of takoyaki.
(They can be found in the frozen foods
section.) Open the bag. Put a few on a
plate or in the bento box. Microwave
for a minute or so before eating. Serve
with takoyaki sauce, mayonnaise,
Worcestershire sauce, or whatever. The
first time I packed these in my lunch,
people in my office didn't believe that I
had actually brought octopus balls. I had
to cut open one of the dumplings and show
them the little curl of tentacle inside.
That'll teach 'em to doubt me!
If you're feeling hardcore enough
to make these yourself, good for you!
First off, you need a takoyaki pan. If
you have a hardcore Asian market, the
kind with a decent cookware section,
you might find one there. If not,
Amazon has
them.
It should come with a brushlike
implement and a tool like an icepick.
Then, you need the following
ingredients:
3/4 cup of flour
1 egg
1 1/3 cup of water
several baby octopus or one small
octopus, boiled
hon-dashi
1 scallion
pickled ginger
1/2 cabbage leaf (not including
the "rib")
1/2 cup of Rice Krispies or
off-brand version of same
bonito flakes
vegetable oil for the pan
Start off by heating up the pan. As
it's a heavy, solid chunk of metal,
this will take a little while. Simply
put it on the burner set to the low
end of high (I turn the dial to 7.5, if that's any help) and let
it heat while you prepare the other
elements.
Get out your cutting board. Cut the
boiled octopus into little bits the
right size to put in a ball. The
first picture above should give you an
idea of how large that is. Second,
mince the pickled ginger and the onion
and cut the cabbage leaf into
small, confetti-like pieces. As
you finish cutting each item, put it
in a separate pile on a plate you can
get to quickly and easily. Put 1/2 cup
of the puffed rice cereal stuff in a
cup or something similar. Beat an egg
in a measuring cup, add the water, and add hon-dashi. (I
just slosh some in, but I'd
estimate I use about a teaspoon.) Add the flour and mix to
make batter.
By the time you've got everything
sliced and mixed, the plate should be
good and hot. Oil it well, the top
surface as well as the cups. (This is
what the string brush that should have
come with your takoyaki pan is for.)
Then pour about a tablespoon of batter
in each cup, enough to fill it 3/4 of
the way. Quickly drop a bit of octopus
into each cup, then some cabbage,
scallion, ginger, and bonito flakes.
Finally, scatter the puffed rice over
the top, and then slosh more of the
batter to fill each cup and then slosh over the edges
and between cups. That slosh will end up in the
balls!
Now this is where it gets tricky.
By "tricky" I don't mean difficult so
much as I mean that you really need to
practice and develop a feel for the
process, as a simple set of
instructions can't get all the
techniques across, and in fact may be
hard to follow until your first trial
run. When the batter around the first cups
you filled starts looking a little cooked, draw the
icepick-like tool around between the cups to separate
the batter. Tuck the batter into the nearest cups, down
into the liquid center.
Stick the icepick-like implement that
should have come with your takoyaki
pan between the batter and the pan and
twirl it around the edges as if to
separate the two, then rotate the
batter-ball in the cup so the uncooked
side is now downward and the batter runs
down into the bottom of the cup, completing the sphere
shape. Repeat for all
of the balls,. (If any of them break up
and don't want to turn, as did the
bottom right ball in the picture
to the right, you may not have oiled
the pan well enough, or they may just
need to cook a little longer before
rotating them.) Continue cooking,
rotating them all every few minutes to
put the least-cooked side downwards,
until they're a decent golden brown.
At that point, take 'em out and let
'em cool.
The finished takoyaki will have a
crust on the outside and be soft and
creamy on the inside. Serve them with
takoyaki sauce, mayonnaise, or
Worcestershire sauce. Show them to
your friends to impress them with how
hardcore you are!
I've tried a few variations on this recipe, including
adding the cabbage, ginger, and scallion to the batter
in the mixing stage as opposed to dropping it into each
cup after filling the pan. That worked fine. And you
can use shrimp or something else if the prospect of
eating octopus is a little much for you.
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