Pumpkin Okonomiyaki for Halloween ハロウィーン向けかぼちゃお好み焼き

With Halloween approaching this is pumpkin season. So, we recently got a very big Japanese “Kabocha” pumpkin かぼちゃ from Weee. As I said it was very big so I was able to make three dishes from just half of the kabocha. They were: kabocha salad カボチャサラダ, salted kabocha 塩かぼちゃ and kabocha simmered with eggplant 南瓜と茄子の煮物. That left the remaining half, which my wife cooked in the oven and made a kabocha puree by scraping the cooked meat off the rind. Although she is planning to use it for other purposes, as I said it was a very big pumpkin and produced a lot of puree, so I used some of it to make a seasonal okonomi-yaki お好み焼き for lunch. As shown in the picture as a good measure, I also served the pumpkin salad as a side (shown on the left). The brown and cream colored dabs are additional okonomi-yaki sauce and Kewpie mayo. (They are helpful supplements for the okonomi-yaki.)

Ingredients and directions are the same as previously described. The only difference is I added some of the cooked kabocha puree (about 2 tbs) to the batter (#1). I added a bit more water to make the batter consistency correct. After 4 minutes of cooking on one side, I flipped to make  the pork belly side down and cooked 4 more minutes, then flipped again showing nicely crispy pork and the yellow pumpkin color in the underlying pancake (#2). I cooked 2 more minutes to make the bottom surface crispy. I spread on the oknomi-yaki sauce and added lines of mayo (#3). The cut surface shows the yellow pumpkin color (#4).

We shared one pancake as usual. I topped it with a julienne of pickled ginger, “aonori” 青海苔 dried laver, and bonito flakes (first picture). The texture was very moist as would be expected using kobocha puree. The squash flavor was subtle but clearly present. We maybe like this better than the version made with yamaimo (mountain potato). This is a nice seasonal variation appropriate for Halloween.