it's a takoyaki party!

over the weekend we finally got a chance to make some takoyaki. yangkyu loves this stuff and he got me liking it a whole lot too. we have a favorite japanese market in u street corridor in dc, hana market, and always bought a bag of them in the frozen section. since i'm all about making things from scratch right now, i thought why not just make some of our own?

so when we were in new york last february, we stopped by mitsuwa market {our other favorite japanese market} in edgewater, new jersey and picked up some some packaged takoyaki flour and takoyaki sauce. and on amazon we bought a cast iron takoyaki pan, takoyaki pick and an oil brush. finally at a local h-mart, we were able to buy some bonito flakes to use for the topping and also a frozen bag of octopus, pre-cut {although i did have to cut them a bit more to make the pieces smaller}. 

i do have to say that i did miss out on some key ingredients such as dashi sauce {soup stock} and i had to wing it and make some of my own, benishoga {pickled red ginger} and aonori {green dried seaweed}, but we had some furikake {rice seasoning} and substituted that in instead. and we went without the mayo altogether. 

whipping up the batter was easy enough, but i did have to watch a video to learn how to flip the takoyaki over with a pick. that was pretty hard to do! i made three batches and wasn't really successful in making a single one into a perfect ball. although some of the texture didn't exact measure up, we still gobbled up those three batches like there was tomorrow. and i can't wait to make some more {this time with all the ingredients that were left out}. you really don't need the packaged takoyaki flour and instead you can make the batter with just regular flour. 

if you're ever in need of some takoyaki party over the weekend and are looking for a recipe, this is the one we used. there is an accompanying video and you can also see a list of all the ingredients you need. another variation of a takoyaki recipe can be found in this cute blog. 

happy eating!