Passport & Plate - Anko Taiyaki
Japan | Friday, March 6, 2015 | 
flickr photos
Ingredients
Anko -
200g Azuki Beans
1 cup sugar
Pancake Batter -
1 cup of flour
2 Tbs of corn flour
1/2 tspn of baking powder
1/2 tspn of baking powder
1 egg
3/4 milk
Vegetable oil for greasing
How to prepare this recipeAnko -
1. Wash the Azuki beans and then stick into a medium pot and cover with about 4cms of water.
2. Simmer with a lid on for 20 mins.
3. Drain the water and rinse the beans.
4. Put back into the pot, cover the beans with twice as much water and use a stick blender to split the beans. 5. You could also hand mash or use a food processor for this step.
6. Boil with the lid on for 30 mins or until the beans can be smushed easily.
7. Add the sugar and then boil with the lid off until it’s the consistency of thick paste.
Pancake Batter -
1. Sift the dry ingredients together.
2. Beat the egg.
3. Mix in egg and milk. If your batter isn’t pourable, mix in more milk.
4. Put the batter into a pouring jug or sauce bottle.
Taiyaki -
These steps work for a cast iron Taiyaki pan. If you have an aluminium one keep the burner on low when spooning in the batter.
1. Grease your pan with oil.
2. Keep the pan closed and heat the bottom side with the lip.
3. When the pan is sizzling (drop water onto it to check) turn off the heat.
4. Pour the pancake batter in to both fish. Do this step as quickly as possible, to keep the fish seamless. Ensure the fins are filled. Make the thickness of the better to your own liking, but it’s easier to make the walls thicker.
5. Spoon anko into the middle of the batter, you may need to mould with your hands to fit the fish body.
6. Cover the anko with a thin layer of batter.
7. Close the Taiyaki pan and flip over.
8. Turn the heat back on to low and cook the other side.
9. After about 3 mins check the fish. The fish is finished when the outside is golden and the fish outlines are brown. You may need to flip the pan over to finish the other side.
The story behind this recipeWhen I visited Japan I had a plan to eat everything. I ate raman, daifuku, dango, hoto of Fugi, momji manju of Hiroshima, and obviously more. While I tried to eat a variety of dishes it’s hard to know the soul of a food unless you’ve tasted many of it’s variations which are changed through region and time.
Taiyaki, I discovered, is a pancake shaped as a sea bream. Traditionally it’s innards are bean paste but can also be custard, caramel or sweet potato paste. Imagawayaki is the round predecessor of taiyaki, which I first ate in a Japanese train station cooked by a belt run machine. You could watch through glass as tubes squirted batter onto pans. These would then swim along a conveyor belt and then dump crispy pregnant pancakes into a waiting basin. This autonamaton was not the superior chef!
In an Osakan Spring Festival night market I first tried criossant taiyaki. Two young men carefully lay rectangles of puff pastry onto fish moulds and striped caramel along fish bodies, finally covering with pastry and clamping the pan shut. They would gently rotate the pans to cook through and, as they were bought as fast as could be made, would wrap them up for you hot.
In a little Kyoto chain I found a pancake taiyaki chef built for speed. She would swing a pan open, pour in pancake batter from a ladle, then spread anko on, then cover with batter. All within 30 seconds and then she’d swing the pan shut. Every minute or so she would slam her hand along the handles, flipping each pan over the element ensuring a racket and an even fry.
On coming home I realising how much I missed Japan, the people, the place, the culture. How better to return than by eating! There are many places in Perth that Japanese, but no taiyaki and, while I’m partial to croissant taiyaki, perfecting a recipe should begin with it’s simplest form. So I’ve researched and curated what is an excellent form of red bean paste taiyaki (with a little of the soul of Japan).
