What should you do when it is a beautiful day outside in Osaka and you want to spend your time with your friends and housemates? Well, the best thing you can do is to eat Osaka’s soul food, takoyaki! On September 8th 2018 we had a takoyaki party at Miyakojima share house. As part of Come on Up’s monthly event, we came up with the idea to have an Osaka soul food party! As a new intern it was a very nice experience because this was the first event I took part in! 

Everybody helped with the preparation and making of the takoyaki. However, these takoyaki were not just the normal takoyaki with octopus inside. We also used a lot of other ingredients to make the takoyaki even more delicious and fun to make. We used sausages, fish cake, cheese and even tuna salad! We used these ingredients to make weird combinations in the takoyaki but nonetheless, it was still very delicious!

So how do you make takoyaki? It is very simple:

1. You make the batter using dashi, eggs, soy sauce and flour. 

2. Heat up the takoyaki pan and coat the pan with cooking oil.

3. Put your preferred ingredients in the holes and fill up the pan with batter.

4. Sprinkle the pan with ginger and green onions. (optional)

5. Keep turning the batter using a takoyaki turner or chopstick until it becomes a ball.

6. After it’s cooked you can add mayonnaise, katsuobushi and green dried seaweed for extra taste and decoration.

But the party did not end yet after all the takoyaki we ate! One of our share mates from Korea, Shinobi, made Korean pancakes with all the leftover ingredients! It was delicious!

All in all, this party was amazing and I can’t wait for the next one!

Thien Kim