Life with a hot plate
or, what do okonomiyaki, pancakes, and tortillas have in common?
Short updates:
Chicago Restaurant Week happened a few weeks ago. It’s mostly an excuse to go to steakhouses—relatively cheaply—and restaurants that we’ve been meaning to go for years. Trino (Mexican) and Hawksmoor (British) were very good, very different steakhouses. Galit (Middle Eastern) was the best meal we’ve had in quite some time. We got delivery from them a few times during the pandemic, but the falafel fresh out of their kitchen is far, far superior to what we were getting then.
Following up on my previous post about poetry, here’s an essay called “They Forgot to Sing”, which is a review of the book Poetry as Enchantment by Dana Gioia1. The book does sound interesting—it’s about how poetry has become less relevant to the broader culture by abandoning things that worked in the past. I feel vindicated in focusing on musical qualities of the poetry I’ve been reading.
One kitchen gadget that’s very common in Japan but not in the US is an electric griddle. I found some online polls2 that said a majority of Japanese people own one. My family didn’t have one when I was a child, but I did see relatives whip them out to make something right on the table.
The Japanese call it a “hot plate” (hotto purēto).
The photo above was taken at Gangnam Market in West Town, and I’m guessing most decent-sized Asian supermarket would carry something similar.
Of course, I’m talking about this because we recently got one, and we’ve been happy with what we can make with it. We like the communal aspect of tabletop cooking, and how easy it is for the kids to watch the cooking process. We also think they can participate in the cooking more easily, when they’re old enough.
Japanese staples
One of the first things we made on the griddle was gyoza (potstickers). When you try to make a lot of gyoza on the stove, you end up going through many batches because you’re limited by the size of your pan. On the griddle, you can easily cook dozens of dumplings at once.
You can buy frozen gyoza at grocery stores, or make them from scratch. Making them from scratch is a fun group activity—I like the basic recipe from sirogohan.com as a way to get started (The recipe is in Japanese, but your computer should be able to translate it pretty well). We have done gyoza parties already3, and those should only get better when the kids are old enough to do some wrapping.
For the sheer amount of food on the griddle, the current record must be yakisoba, or stir-fried Chinese-style noodles.
Even cooking 2 servings of yakisoba on the stove can be a challenge, so a griddle is almost a necessity if you want to cook it for a family.
The other big one is okonomiyaki. We haven’t made it yet, but we did buy an okonomiyaki mix during our last Mitsuwa run.
With Julie’s family being in Osaka, I’ve been spending a lot more time in Osaka over the past decade. Okonomiyaki is one of the iconic Osaka dishes, and many Osaka families would cook it at home on their griddles. It does feel like something I should get into, if only to feel more like an Osaka person.
The okonomiyaki chain that we usually go to when we’re in Osaka, Fugetsu, was involved in creating the mix that we bought. So we know what the end result should look and taste like—we’ll see how it goes.
Breakfast food
Really, you can use the griddle for anything that restaurants make when they have a big flat-top griddle. That includes a big portion of the standard diner breakfast repertoire.
Again, the griddle makes it so much easier to cook a lot of stuff at once, like multiple pancakes.
French toast has been a hit with the 4-year-old, and you can even cook some bacon or sausage alongside. You can do egg dishes, too.
I’ve long thought that most generic brunch places are highly overrated in terms of food quality4. Even if your main goal is to socialize, why not gather at your home and cook breakfast dishes together instead?
Other ideas
Since we got the griddle, I think we’ve used it more than once a week. The most common use case, actually, is warming up tortillas—picture taco joints and their griddles. Warming them up on the stove can be a huge pain, and don’t tell me the microwave is fine because it’s not.
I do want to lean in a bit more in this direction and make quesadillas, cook taco meats on the griddle, etc.
Korean BBQ is something else we want to try at home. You can get nice marinated meats from an Asian grocery, and it’s another great communal eating experience.
Do you have a griddle at home? Or any other tabletop cooking equipment? If you have one, what do you use it for?
What I’m listening to now
Here's a new album from Shintaro Sakamoto, called Yoo-Hoo (ヤッホー/Yahhō in Japanese).
Sakamoto was the singer for the band Yura Yura Teikoku, whom I talked about 3 years ago. Musically, he’s always at least a little bit psychedelic, and often old-timey at the same time. Lyrically, he’s wry, and often singing from inside a vaguely unsettling scenario.
The first song, “おじいさんへ (Dear Grandpa)”, is the best song, with all those characteristics. The song takes place in an unspecified emergency, and he tells an old man to rest somewhere safe, because he’ll take care of the situation—whatever that could mean.
The seventh song, “麻痺 (Numb)”, is another standout. This is a horn-based funk song with some 80s Talking Heads feel, and he sings about being numb, both physically and mentally, and about wanting to feel more.
with unclear methodologies (Here’s one example)
one of which included someone from Utsunomiya, the Japanese city most closely associated with the dish.
In Chicago, there’s a lot of places that serve Mexican breakfast and, more recently, Filipino breakfast, and those are a lot more interesting, in my opinion.