A Whole Lotta Wiener

Sometimes you just need some wiener.

And it's really hard to say no when it's only 1€80 a 10-pack at the local convenience store.

The humble hot dog sees a lot of abuse. It gets slathered in ketchup. It gets served with cheap canned chili. In Paris, it gets baked into the bun forming some sort of disgusting 4-day old bagel dog sold alongside pre-made crêpes near tourist traps.

We have nothing against cheap convenience foods. And this week, with both of us having had a lot of work, going to the butcher or fishmonger or green market wasn't an option.

Cheap and Trashy
One thing you really appreciate after leaving the US is good ol' WT food. Especially on a hot day (by local standards, to which we've become acclimated, anyway) where you just want to grill some hot dogs or factory-produced burger patties and have a tub of potato salad from Safeway or Costco or some other place a foodie would look down his nose.

Of course, living in a 300+ year-old building with no back yard means no barbecue. (The French don't take kindly to having their historical neighborhoods burnt down by Americans longing for a good ol' cookout.) So Alannah improvised with our ridiculously effective broiler, roasting some wieners that I could swear tasted like they came off a Weber kettle. Look, she even made grill marks!


Alongside it, a gigantic mound of potato salad. Here's where we went back to our usual selves... I've never really cared much for mayonnaise. Unless it's homemade or Kewpie brand mayo from Japan. In this case, we went for making our own Japanese-style mayo. It's a bit lighter and sweeter than regular mayo, and unlike French mayo, isn't infused with mustard. It's pretty simple - egg yolks + rice vinegar + cider vinegar + salad oil + a pinch of sugar. Then work it like crazy with a whisk, 'til you've got a gooey, creamy sauce ready to be slathered over potatoes.

Japanese Wieners
Not letting anything go to waste, we once again leaned on the hot dog crutch the next night, this time to make Japanese food. This isn't out of the ordinary - when we had relatives visiting from Japan last fall, they taught us a bunch of their favorite dishes. My aunt kept adding at the end of each dish, "Oh, and it's really good with hot dogs!" Being an old divorcée with adult kids who've long left home, I suppose she was all about finding new ways to enjoy wieners.


In that spirit, we put together a hot dog donburi. A donburi is a big bowl of rice topped with meat, often with a softly scrambled egg surrounding it. For instance, you often see it with tonkatsu, which is a fried and breaded pork loin. We substituted a hot dog.

Unfortunately, beaten egg and panko bread crumbs don't really stick to the slick, smooth surface of hot dogs too well, so there was a gloppy mess of wiener to be dealt with. But in the end, it worked out... and was surprisingly tasty.

And Some Balls, Too...
When our Japanese contingent was visiting, they'd brought us a takoyaki pan - a cast iron pan with golf ball-sized wells to make the eponymous Osaka snack. The batter is similar to okonomiyaki, based on the slimy, white, viscous nagaimo (or yamaimo if you can dig some up), only without the cabbage. This time around, I'd made some tenkasu (little fritters of tempura batter) to bolster the dough, lest you want the takoyaki balls to come out flaccid and not hold their shape.

Naturally, instead of cubes of boiled octopus, I loaded up each ball with a piece of hot dog.


Sadly, cast iron takoyaki pans and typical French vitroceramic electric ranges are not a marriage made in heaven, so a half dozen of our balls were essentially culinary abortions. The other ten, however, came out perfectly spherical, brown, and delectable.


I put them into pyramids topped with the customary aonori, katsuoboshi, mayo, and a sweet soy/vinegar sauce. A little yakisoba on the side (with sliced hot dog, of course), and some potato salad, and this was almost an authentic Japanese meal.

Next time, we'll preheat the takoyaki pan in the oven and perhaps put it over the ninja stove (sadly our only way to cook over gas) and see if we can get a full set of balls to bite down on.

Enny-Teen You Want!

Would you swallow this?

It's nagaimo (Japanese for "long potato," though nothing like a potato), the farmed substitute for yamaimo ("mountain potato," sometimes referred to in English as "Chinese mountain yam"). It is, in fact, nothing like potato or yam. Maybe a bit more like taro root in its starchiness, but that's about where the similarity ends. As soon as you put naga- or yama-imo to a grater, it turns into a slimy, viscous white goo.

Why would anyone want to produce such a substance? It's seminal in the production of okonomiyaki.


The above example is our first attempt from scratch at this classic Kansai-region specialty. Japanese stores worldwide sell special (expensive) mixes to make your own okonomiyaki batter, but if you can find the basic parts, it's just as easy - and tastier - to make it from scratch.

Naturally, you need about a half cup of the slimed nagaimo - as you're more likely to score with Monica Bellucci than find yamaimo in any western country. (I shall keep trying both... Guess which one is in France?) And you'll need a cup of dashi (bonito broth with kombu). Both widely available at Asian supermarkets. If that's too out of reach, you can always try grating actual taro or yam, and using fish broth, but, umm, good luck...

Into that, you mix lots of julienned cabbage, green onions or leek, and chopped pickled ginger (the bright red beni shoga if you can get it, but the pink/yellow sushi stuff can work if sliced into slivers and salted). Then, in what may seem a bit backward, add a beaten egg, and then flour - little by little - until it thickens into something a little more viscous than pancake dough.

Get a skillet all hot and greasy (preferably one that retains heat in the walls, like cast iron) and spread a large ladle of the cabbage-batter to form the size of a pancake, but careful not to reach the sides - you'll want room to flip this badboy.

As one side is cooking, you can add your choice of meat and lightly press it into the top side of the mixture. In Osaka it's usually sliced pork belly - like unsmoked bacon. To not go bankrupt in Paris (where a small amount of Asian-style pork belly costs more than just going out and buying dinner), we used lardon nature for the same taste in a different shape. Other good choices are squid, octopus, or small shrimp.

The name okonomiyaki literally means "cooked anything you like" - as you can throw in whatever meat (or non-meat, like mochi) as a topping. At my aunt's okonomiyaki-house in the Osaka suburbs, you can even get things as un-Japanese as cheese or pepperoni in it.

Back to the cooking, drip a little bit of the white stuff over your meat (er... a drizzle of batter) to act as an anti-stick agent, then flip over your okonomiyaki. This may require two spatulas or incredibly quick hands based on how heavy you've loaded the top side. Let it cook at least a few minutes, then flip it back over to look at it and ensure it all looks evenly crisped (but not completely browned).

Lay it into a plate, top with katsuobushi (dried bonito flakes) if you have it, criss-cross with mayonnaise (Kewpie brand if you have it), your choice of Japanese brown sauce (Kagome, Bulldog, you name it...), and again, if you have it, aonori (crumbled green seaweed). You can even use ketchup if you're so inclined.

It really isn't a lot of work. And the amounts we used are good for three full-size okonomiyaki. We had one Osaka-style each to start with... but the problem with this dish is it always leaves you wanting more. We decided to go a second round, making one more okonomiyaki to split.

This time we went Hiroshima style:


The main difference (besides the egg) is that there's a layer of fried yakisoba noodles on top. This makes it a moda-n ("modern") yaki. The fact that it's furthermore pressed thinner and then topped with egg is what makes it Hiroshima-style.

Of course, liking to work without a script, we tweaked it a bit. Instead of the usual egg crêpe on top, I did a simple fried egg. Having just bought a load of über-fresh eggs at the local marché today, there was no way an egg would be prepared in this house without a runny, drippy, gooey yolk. Also, I changed from the large flakes of katsuobushi to the smaller, finer ones to let more of the yakisoba texture through. Finally, there's the garnish of fresh green onions, which goes with the noodles' Worcestershire-y taste. (Because if you want to make a wicked quick yakisoba, fry some ramen noodles in ketchup and Worcestershire sauce.)