Takoyaki
July 17, 2006
I celebrated my 26th making a kansai classic: takoyaki.
These grilled octopus ball-shaped edible is renown in Osaka. You can’t go 10 minutes in Osaka without running into a takoyaki shop. It’s also a fun party idea as they’re fairly easy to make and are bite-sized morsels perfect for beer guzzling. We bought our own takoyaki gas oven and a few useful utensils (the toothpick like metal bit is needed to flip the damn things). We bought a few ingredients and some octopus. We were on our way to takoyaki mastery.
We made 3 batches of 15. The first batch sad to say was a complete learning experience. The octopus wasn’t fully enclosed and they weren’t even ball shaped. Still with a bit of okonomiyaki sauce and some cold oolong tea to wash it down, the taste was great. The second batch was much better – we tried adding extra batter to make it rounder. The third batch was slightly worse than the second as we tried another technique.
The second batch
I will walk through the covered shopping areas and watch the takoyaki shop owners with much more intensely now. I will steal their secret techniques and make perfectly spherical takoyaki.
Extras:
Wiki entry for takoyaki
Cooking Instructions (Japanese)
Videos on making takoyaki
