Homemade Okonomiyaki

Inspired by the Okonomiyaki stall at Sunday Upmarket, I thought I would try making this Japanese pancake delicacy at home. It shouldn’t really be too hard, after all, the recipe is a simple pancake batter with cabbage and pretty much anything else you want for topping.

Okonomiyaki sauce is a key ingredient to the dish, and it took me quite a long time to find it as well, scouring almost every grocery store in Chinatown. Only one of them had a sauce properly labelled as Okonomiyaki though I was going to give up and just try the Tonkatsu sauce. For the record, I found the famous Japanese Bulldog branded Okonomiyaki sauce at the New Loon Moon Supermarket, though I realised later I should have headed straight to the Japan Centre located near Piccadilly as it seems to have almost everything you would ever want from Japan.

My Okonomiyaki

Since you can add pretty much anything you want to Okonomiyaki, I decided to follow the pork and prawn mixture I’ve enjoyed at Abeno Too, substituting smoked streaky bacon for the pork. I didn’t buy the fish flakes that dance like they’re alive, nor the seaweed bits but with the mayonnaise and okonomiyaki sauce still tasted delicious.

Exposed to iPhone-mania

Last night I had a few people around at my flat for a bit of a catch up. Mike, currently visiting from over in the States, who’d recently bought an iPhone fortunately had it with him so we all got a little hands on sneak preview. Strangely he’s had to take the sim card out since they can’t disable global roaming at the moment and would cause his bill to sky rocket.

The iPhone looked a lot smaller than I imagined it would be, approximately the same size as the current standard iPod. The interface is simple, with a single button at the bottom and everything else controlled via either motion or touch sensors. Its interface is, for the most part, very intuitive. For example, unlocking the phone simply requires a finger drag from left to right across the “lock” icon displayed on the screen. Predictive text input is much more advanced, context sensitive if you’re web browsing or texting and autocorrecting based on the letters in the vicinity (and not just the buttons you pushed).

My most favourite bit was definitely when you put the phone into iPod mode. Turning the phone on its side turns it into a visual display of all the albums where you can flip through each and every one that’s currently on your phone. A flick of the finger moves either left or right, and a longer drag results in a much faster way of going through them all. Visually very satisfying!

I can’t say that I’m going to convert any time soon considering I’m pretty happy with my current phone and can’t really justify the premium.

Need Memory? Visit Picstop

Extreme III Compact Flash 2GBI needed a new memory card for a new gadget of mine, and thought that I’d look to see how expensive things were here compared to the States since I’m heading there for Christmas. After looking around for best prices for the Extreme III CompactFlash 2GB card, the most reasonable looking place I could find was a place called Picstop. It’s got fantastic reviews, and even with the weak USD, the card ended being only about USD5 more with shipping.

I ordered it on Friday morning, the card was shipped that day, and even with standard shipping the card arrived at the office on Monday morning. I even posted a couple of queries via their website (which isn’t exactly going to win any awards) but got some fantastic customer service. Definitely check it out if you’re living in the UK and need something for your Digital camera.