Grilled food seems to be the mainstream flavor of Japanese street food, and in addition to the familiar takoyaki and thick oyaki, Sikong Yao has captured another popular delicacy. As you can tell from the long queue outside the stalls, this shop must be good.

Okonomiyaki is a Japanese-style vegetable pancake, a folk cuisine in Kansai, Japan, and a part of Osaka's food culture, a representative of noodle culture. Due to its appearance, Okonomiyaki is also called "Japanese-style pizza". Compared to other Japanese dishes, okonomiyaki is cheaper, so okonomiyaki is also called "one-money foreign food", which is a Western-style food that can be eaten for one penny.

The so-called "one-money foreign food" was a popular term at the end of the last century, when the Japanese economy was still sluggish. After World War II, people's livelihood began to become richer, and the original "one-dollar foreign food" began to increase more expensive materials such as meat, seafood, and eggs.

In Japan, Okonomiyaki is divided into two types: Kansai Okonomiyaki and Hiroshima Okonomiyaki, which are basically similar, but there are subtle differences, and no one can say which one is the authentic Okonomiyaki. Gastronomy has continued to this day, more or less lost its original taste, and in the process of continuous improvement and improvement, it may become more and more sophisticated, or it may be drowned in the tide of history. However, Okonomiyaki is clearly the kind that survives proudly, and there is a saying that if you want to distinguish between Okonomiyaki and Hiroshima yaki, it is mainly yakisoba, that is, Hiroshima yaki has yakisoba and Okonomiyaki does not, but this is not entirely true. In fact, in this shop of Dotonbori gourmets. You can also eat okonomiyaki with yakisoba, and the name of this restaurant is called "modern yaki".

Strictly speaking, Okonomiyaki or Okonomiyaki still does not have a more formal Chinese translation, and some regions are directly called "Okonomiyaki" according to the Japanese kanji writing, and in Japanese, Okonomi roughly means "add what you like", Yaki means "fried", and Okonomiyaki means "cook your favorite food at will".

That's why adding yakisoba to okonomiyaki becomes Hiroshima-yaki. It's not appropriate.

There is an endless stream of guests for modern burning. The owner, who loves okonomiyaki very much, opened this modern yaki restaurant in Dotonbori Food Street based on what he saw, and improved it on the basis of Okonomiyaki. The core raw materials and ingredients are imported from Japan. Flip it on the iron plate and drizzle it with beautiful milk. Sprinkled with bonito flakes, the rich aroma and light sweet and sour taste are impressive. There is also takoyaki with a special sauce that is delicious and chewy. The price is also very reasonable.

However, Sikong Yao, who has already eaten takoyaki, has obviously lost his passion for the takoyaki of this modern yaki restaurant, after all, he still has to save his stomach to taste other delicacies.

It is said that Zenghai, a citizen of Kansai, Japan, chose the food that best represents the flavor of Osaka, and Okonomiyaki was ranked second. According to another survey, Okonomiyaki is the most common dish that Osaka families cook.

For Osaka people, eating okonomiyaki at a restaurant or at home is a part of life, and for Japanese tourists, it is a shame not to try the local okonomiyaki when you arrive in Osaka.

Okonomiyaki has many flavors that can cater to the tastes of different customers, and because Sikong Yao wants to save his stomach to enjoy more food, he abandons the practice of adding yakisoba to okonomiyaki.

The Japanese-style pork flavor, paired with teriyaki sauce, slightly spicy and not spicy fried noodles, and cheese with a richer taste, color, aroma and flavor, is a very popular taste, hot and fragrant, which is loved by many young people. When the store saw that Sikong Yao did not choose to add fried noodles to Okonomiyaki, their expressions were a little surprised.

However, Sikong Yao could only smile helplessly, although he really wanted to try this okonomiyaki with Japanese fried noodles, but from the previous observations, the number of fried noodles was so large that it could not be described as affordable, if he really ate a okonomiyaki with fried noodles, he would probably not be able to eat anything else at noon, so Sikong Yao could only endure the pain and cut his love. All kinds of ingredients are prepared, first pour water and eggs into the flour and stir well, and then the shop skillfully adds cabbage, shrimp, corn kernels and carrots to the stirred batter, sprinkles the appropriate amount of pepper salt, salt, seaweed and other ingredients to taste, the chef who fired Okonomiyaki controls four open hearth at the same time, and the hand speed is amazing, which dazzles Sikong Yao.

Pour a little oil into the pan, put in the appropriate amount of prepared okonomiyaki paste when the oil is about to smoke, fry over medium-low heat until one side is golden brown, then turn over, continue to fry the back over medium-low heat until all sides are golden brown, put the fried okonomiyaki on a plate, squeeze the mayonnaise, sprinkle with green onion leaves and bonito flakes, and you're done.

This small shop called "Modern Yaki" has more shrimp than other stores that sell okonomiyaki, and it also adds chopped flower branches, so that the taste of okonomiyaki is more intense and authentic, and the seaweed needs to be eaten more to make it more okonomiyaki, and the bonito is the finishing touch, which should not be omitted, and the okonomiyaki that is full of portions but does not make people feel embarrassed is definitely a delicacy for adults.

Okonomiyaki is also made with pork knuckles cut into boxy shapes like filet beef, which is full of strength and aroma, and it has the same flavor as takoyaki, but it is a different taste experience.

One of the dishes that can be found everywhere on the streets of Dotonbori, as well as the deep-fried shrimp with a golden color and an incomparably beautiful pulse, and a finger-thick prawn wrapped in a pulp and fried are definitely irresistible to children, and although the fried food is quite controversial, it still can't resist people's love for it.

Even tempura, which is supposed to only be found in Japanese restaurants, is still sold on the street.

Tempura, one of the four major Japanese dishes, is a representative deep-fried food in Japanese cuisine, made with flour, eggs, water and puree, fresh fish, shrimp and seasonal vegetables coated in a batter and fried in a pan until golden brown, and dipped in soy sauce and radish puree.

Many people think that tempura refers to fried shrimp, but this is not the case. Dishes fried in batter are collectively referred to as tempura, which is not the name of a specific dish, but a general term for fried foods, and the specific types include vegetable tempura, seafood tempura, and assorted tempura.

There are dishes that can be served at light meals and banquets, and tempura can be very popular or high-end dishes. Tempura has its name from Portugal and has been around for about 150 years, and the most important part of its preparation is the batter.

Egg batter is the most common type of tempura, and the prepared batter is called tempura cloth, and the flour used to make the dough coat is called thin flour in Japanese. It is flour with less gluten. The tempura noodles made from this batter are thin and crispy.

Sikong Yao walked in and found that the production method of the pulp coat was also different from what he imagined. In order to highlight the original flavor of the ingredients, tempura is usually only prepared with a thin paste, and you can still see the wrapped ingredients, and sometimes there is only a paste on one side, and there is almost no paste on the other side.

The pulp coating is made of flour, eggs, and water to prepare noodles, of which the flour is selected from low-gluten flour, and the gluten content is less than 10%, the ratio between them is 15% of eggs, 35% of flour, and 50% of water.

In addition to emphasizing the umami flavor of the ingredients, the seasoning of the dishes itself is also a key factor. The seasoning of tempura is generally done in stages with a mixture of seasonings. It is divided into two stages, the first stage is the marinating and seasoning before frying, and the second stage is the seasoning of the condiment dish after frying. The seasoning before frying is generally based on dried pine fish sauce, soy sauce and sea rice juice, and the seasoning after frying is to add a small amount of granulated sugar and radish puree to the dried pine fish juice, soy sauce, light soy sauce and sea rice juice to mix evenly, for guests to dip and eat.

Like Okonomiyaki, tempura has different genres in Japan, such as the Kanto region, where sesame oil is the main type of fat used for frying, and the surface is not smooth, and the seasoning is good at mixing sauces. In the Kansai region, cotton seed oil is the main body, and the finished product is soft and soft, and salt is used in seasoning. In the Kyushu region, soybean oil and peanut oil are mainly used in the paste, and the original juice of the ingredients is used for seasoning, and other regions also have their own unique tempura dishes. The street tempura in Osaka is mainly based on vegetable oil, and it is not greasy and beautiful.

Sikong Yao picked out a conger eel tempura, the store will prepare the ingredients outside the outside wrapped in a layer of wheat flour, eggs and water to make a batter, and then put it into the oil pan to fry until browned, a moment to make, after the fried tempura pays attention to visual beauty, generally placed in a small bamboo basket for customers, Sikong Yao took it, dipped in coarse salt and soy sauce seasoning can be eaten.

Although fried, the conger eel and vegetables are not greasy or greasy, crispy on the outside and tender on the inside, which not only maintains the original flavor of the ingredients, but also has a unique taste, even if it is used as a good dish to accompany wine and rice, it is not difficult to understand why it is popular.

After eating dorayaki, takoyaki, tamagoyaki, okonomiyaki and tempura in a row, even if Sikong Yao, who still has a big appetite, can't help but feel a little thirsty at this time, when he looks around, he can't find any juice shop, so he has no choice but to choose a restaurant to sit down and rest. (To be continued......)