Monjayaki (Tokyo Runny Savoury Griddle Pancake)

Ingredients

• 300 g cabbage
• 2 tbsp shredded dried squid
• 2 tbsp sakura shrimp (or dried shrimp)
• 3 tbsp tenkasu (tempura crumbs)
• 3 tbsp canned sweetcorn
• 1 tbsp red pickled ginger
• [Batter] 350 ml water
• [Batter] 30 g cake flour
• [Batter] 1 tsp Japanese granulated dashi
• [Batter] 2 tbsp Worcestershire sauce
• [Batter] 1 tsp soy sauce
• 1 tbsp vegetable oil
• Aonori (green seaweed flakes), to taste
• Katsuobushi (bonito flakes), to taste

Steps

1. Roughly chop the cabbage into pieces about 5 mm square. Finely chop the pickled ginger too, and drain the corn well.
2. [Batter] In a large bowl, mix the water, granulated dashi, Worcestershire sauce and soy sauce, sprinkle in the flour and whisk until there are no lumps. The batter should be thin and watery.
3. Add the cabbage, dried squid, sakura shrimp, pickled ginger and corn to the batter and stir briefly. Add the tempura crumbs just before cooking.
4. Heat a hotplate to 230 °C (high) and oil it. Scoop only the solids from the bowl, draining off the liquid, and stir-fry them for 2 to 3 minutes, chopping with two spatulas.
5. When the cabbage has softened, push the ingredients outward to form a doughnut-shaped bank about 20 cm across.
6. Pour half of the remaining batter from the bowl into the centre of the ring. When it bubbles and starts to thicken, pour in the rest.
7. When the whole centre has cooked down and turned gooey, break the bank and mix everything together, then spread it out thinly and flat. Sprinkle with aonori and bonito flakes.
8. Using a small spatula (hagashi), press a little at a time against the griddle from the edge, letting it crisp, then scoop it up and eat.

Origin and history

Monjayaki is a taste of Tokyo's old downtown: a very loose flour-and-water batter mixed with finely chopped cabbage and other ingredients, cooked on a griddle and eaten straight off it with small spatulas.

During the food shortages of the Showa 20s (roughly 1945–1955), a simple monja of flour mixed with water plus a little soy sauce or syrup was a favourite of children at dagashi candy shops. Paper and writing tools were hard to come by, so children wrote letters on the griddle with the batter to learn and play, and it was called moji-yaki ("letter grill"), which is said to have become monji and then monja.

With Japan's rapid economic growth, the fillings grew richer with cabbage, corn and tempura crumbs, while dagashi shops gradually disappeared. To preserve the taste of their childhood, a few shops in Tsukishima, Chuo ward, opened as monjayaki specialists, and it was reborn as a dish adults enjoy with drinks. Today many restaurants line Tsukishima's "Monja Street".