Takoyaki - Japanese-style octopus by chef Petar Mihalchev

TAKOYAKI (Japan's Best Street Food)

Whole octopus.

In a pot bring to the boil: water, 2 pinches of Sencha green tea, 3 bay leaves. Once it boils, add vinegar.

Clean the octopus's beak and, using a toothbrush in a basin with water and ice, clean it of sand. Cut 2 fingers below the eyes.

Dip into the boiling water, dip and pull out immediately, and do this several times until the tentacles curl up (so it is tempered). Then boil for between 20 and 25 min, until you can quickly pierce it with a wooden skewer and it comes out without a problem.

Then scrape off the skin with the edge (of a knife) on the reverse side of the suckers. Cut into rounds.

Okonomiyaki sauce and takoyaki sauce: tomato purée, carrots, orange peel. Put in a pan on the hob on low: ½ onion, 3 shiitake mushrooms, 3 dates, half an apple, 35 ml Worcestershire.

Move the octopus into iced water to stop the cooking. In the pot with ice I put a bag and the octopus inside it so the little sauce does not leak into the water.

For the batter: 300 ml dashi (or from the broth in which the octopus was boiled), 1 egg. Whisk and add in a thin stream to the flour (about 300 grams I think it was, he didn't say). The liquid is very runny.

Pour into the takoyaki pan (for balls) up to half. Add octopus, pickled ginger, fresh onion, and top up. With wooden sticks after a little while turn the balls so that the baked bottom part goes up and the liquid pours from below to form the bottom part.

The balls are served drizzled with the sauce passed through a sieve and sprinkled with nori and katsuobushi (bonito flakes).