Explore everyday life in Japan
Many of you are probably already familiar with tako-yaki, a popular food from Osaka that can be found at festivals and small take-out only restaurants in or near stations all over Japan.
Pictures of this food abound and many TV shows like to feature vendors standing in their booths with small towels wrapped around their heads, bending over molded cast-iron griddles, adeptly flipping thickening lumps of batter and octopus with a single skewer until they become perfectly round, golden, savory pastries.
I venture to guess, though, that many of you aren’t aware that tako-yaki can easily be made at home and is, I daresay, much better when done so.
Much like waffle irons and pancake griddles in the west, electrical tako-yaki griddles can easily and cheaply be bought throughout Japan. In addition, most, if not all supermarkets sell pre-packaged bags of tako-yaki mix to which you only need to add eggs and water before you are ready to start frying your tako-yaki.
Typically, only octopus is added to tako-yaki, but that doesn’t mean you have to stop there. At home, in your kitchen, anything goes. Some of my favorite things to put in tako-yaki are sausage and cheese, and pickled ginger and shrimp. Another combination that is popular in my house is cheese and kimchi.
Though I don’t entertain at home often, mostly because my house isn’t very big and because inviting people into your home in Japan tends to invoke many rules of hospitality (For example, treating your guests to high-quality food and drinks, not to mention giving them a gift of some kind when they leave.), one way that I do like to entertain is by having one or two families over and cooking tako-yaki together.
Everyone enjoys taking a turn at making their own flavor combinations and trying to shape these globs of molten batter into nicely rounded pastries. Plus, hot off the griddle tako-yaki goes great with cold beer!
This is an ongoing series that will explore various aspects of daily life in Japan. My hope is that this series will not only reveal to its followers, image by image, what Japan looks like, but that it will also inform its followers about unique Japanese items and various cultural and societal practices. If you are interested in getting regular updates about life in Japan, please consider following me at @boxcarblue. If you have any questions about life in Japan, please don’t hesitate to ask. I will do my best to answer all of your questions.