Summer Okonomiyaki

We dont eat much meat around here and if we do its wild meat or biodynamic, happy playful chicken. Its partly for environmental reasons and partly health reasons; commercial meat production contributes a high percentage to greenhouse gasses and vegetarians and low meat consumers live longer and live better. B2 has been a vegetarian since she was 3 and that began my journey into vegetarian cooking.

My mum is a vegetarian, so i grew up not eating much meat, but my step dad loved meat so it did make the dinnertable. My husband hasn't eaten red meat by choice ( if you make him roast beef for dinner he will eat it) for environmental reasons for over 10 years and so when we got together i just pretty much stopped buying and eating meat ( initially i did go to town on the meat when we went out - the wait staff would assume the 'beef n reef' was for the bloke and the ricotta stuffed zucchini flowers were for me) but over the years the lack of consumption has reduced the cravings B1 and i had for meat and now if i go out i pretty much stick to wild fish and B1 is a complete vegetarian by choice. But i do know the feeling of satisfaction and comfort that eating meat can bring and here is a recipe to trump all others to solve that need! Its comfort food extroardinaire! Summer Garden Okonomiyaki.

Okonomiyaki is Japanese fast food, pizza with a twist. I never liked cooked cabbage until i ate this. I use whatever is in the garden in addition to the staple ingredient - cabbage, in this case a late pick Savoy. You can mix the ingredients up to suit your preference for vegetable proportions or to suit whatever you have available. Here's a rough guide recipe based on last nights mix. Feeds 4.

1 cabbage - finely sliced
1-2 carrots - grated
A good handful of beans - chopped into inch pieces
Leftover coriander - roughly chopped
Chopped shallots
4-5 eggs
1/2 cup flour (ish)
2 tab strong salty stock
oil for frying

You can also use prawn, chicken... whatever.

Mix in large bowl to combine well. Shallow fry in pan until one side is set. ( at this stage if you want to add prawn or chicken pieces or mince, put on top of the pancake now and lightly cover with more mixture, flip and continue frying until cooked.


With okonomiyaki you can feed vegetarians and meat eaters without doing a different meal. You can make small pikelet size ones but we just do one motherload each which fills a dinner plate (oink). Serve with ketchap manis or tamari and japanese mayonaise (regular works too but the japanese one tastes better but im not sure why as i cant read the label!) It makes great leftovers and we fight over who gets it!