Pancake of the Month: Japanese bacon okonomiyaki

It's the best day of the year, a day devoted to pancakes. I decided to go outside my comfort zone and make a bake-in-the-pan savoury pancake. The recipe comes from Chatelaine's website.

Clearly I'm not going outside of my source comfort zone.

With six eggs, I was thinking this recipe was heading towards quiche territory. I also think I wasn't supposed to use a small tub of violently green prepared coleslaw, but rather just a shredded cabbage mix, because I was over the suggested mass but under the volume. I couldn't find plain mix, though, so neon coleslaw it was.

The verdict?

So good. I have to make more bake-in-the-pan pancakes. And this one in particular. The texture is both denser and at the same time fluffier than a regular pancake; not quiche-like at all. I overcooked the bacon, so it didn't cover the entire pan, but it was still an excellent addition. The prepared coleslaw kept the pancake nice and moist and gave a nice flavour kick, although the neon-green colouring would make this more appropriate for St. Paddy's day^*. The recipe says it will serve four, and we easily had enough for a meal and leftovers the next day.

The sauces they suggest to go with the pancake were nice additions. The DC had a hard time choosing a favourite, but in the end he and I both preferred the lemon-mayonnaise.

My one quibble was that the recipe didn't say to drain the excess bacon fat. I had rather a lot, probably because I overcooked the bacon before adding the batter, so I did drain it. I'll have to try it again, this time paying attention to the time and see if there is still too much fat.

In other pancake news, I tried the berry-almond pancakes again, this time with no substitutions. Total yum. Slicing one of the bananas meant the pancakes were moist but didn't feel partially cooked, and the almond flavour was much better this time.

There's a long weekend coming up, so I will be trying another recipe. Or two. Keep an eye out.


^*What on earth do they put in that stuff to get it that colour? Nevermind. I'm better off not knowing.