Ebi-Yaki (Our version of Tako-Yaki)

We're really a whole family of fatties. So when I come home it's time to play and make some fun foods. While we were on our trip to Japan, we came across a street-side food known as tako-yaki. My father fell in love with them, but it's impossible to find in the US. While we were at the Japanese supermarket, we picked up a tako-yaki pan, some tako, and some batter and came home and began our discovery of this delicacy. This time when I came back however, we were out of the batter mix and had no tako (octopus) available.

So we got innovative.

My mom discovered a pretty similar version of the batter.

We'll call this, Mama Yu's "Toco"-Yaki Batter

Mama Yu's "Toco Yaki Batter"

10.5 oz. Cake Flour

3 eggs

4 1/4 cup ice water

2/3 tsp. salt

1/2 tsp fish powder

1/2 tsp chicken bullion

1/2 tsp baking powder

For tako yaki, the rest is up to you. Usually we'll stick a small cube of taco (octopus) in there (or this time we used ebi (shrimp)), a pinch of scallion, and a pinch of pink pickled ginger. The key is you have to make sure the pan is really hot before you spray it with pam and fill it with your batter. then you just add your fillings. as the outside gets crispy you flip it to make it a ball shape. You can't really explain it, you just need to practice. You can top it off however you like, but in the traditional japanese style, we top it off with japanese mayonaise, tacoyaki sauce (it's brown), benito flakes, and seaweed.

YUM.