Monday, October 19, 2009

Takoyaki (octopus ball) experiment

If you’ve never had takoyaki they are delicious!  Yes, I know the idea of octopus balls may sound a little icky, but trust be on this one, they are wonderful.

Unfortunately, much as I love them I am not fit to make takoyaki within a millions miles of this artist…

…tell me you’re not impressed by that!

Anyway, a friend recently gave us an old takoyaki pan so we decided to give it a clean and give it a try…with my 7-year old standing in for the takoyaki master.  Unfortunately we had no beni shoga (pickled ginger) or katsuobushi (bonito flakes), but that wasn’t going to stop us once we were armed with our octopus and had made the batter…

…first task was oiling said paid and getting it up to the required temperature so we could pop in the batter, then add those cheeky little pieces of octopus…

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…was you’ve got it hot enough and it looks as though the underside is cooked…

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…the only think left to do was to flick them over (unfortunately not with the dexterity of the chap above), but still we did manage to keep the balls moving sufficiently that they ended up looking like this…

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…which wasn’t bad for a first real effort from a 7-year old…so we popped them on the plate gave them a covering our sauce and crushed nori (in place of katsuobushi) and hey presto…

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…luckily, we had enough batter and octopus for 4 batches, so everyone got more than enough!

7 comments:

lishapisa said...

that looks delicious ....have not tried them yet ...can't wait

penny aka jeroxie said...

you made it yourself! now that is impressive. how good are they!

ann low said...

Oh I wish I can have this pan :D

Cook Japan said...

thanks for the comments guys - with the right pan they are not too difficult to make. we might start stocking this pan in the Cook Japan shop...you could also make doughnuts and other things in it

Anonymous said...

Takoyaki sound wonderful! I haven't had a chance to try this yet, and looking forward to it!

My Little Space said...

I juz bought a mini cake mould and can also be used for this recipe as well. Will be trying it soon! And yours look really yummy lol! Cheers.

wasabi prime said...

very cool! I've seen people flip them over with lightning-fast skill and it's so impressive. The first time I had abelskivers, I thought the pan was for takoyaki - haha!