Imagawayaki is a dough-based sandwich stuffed with bean paste or other ingredients. This dish is popular in both Japan and Taiwan. Although sweet bean paste is the traditional filling, these small, round snacks can also be made with other fillings.
Imagawayaki is most commonly known as a dessert in many culinary communities. Imagawayaki sandwiches can be filled with fruit jellies, custards, or creams in addition to sweet bean paste. There are many other types of this item that are savory dishes.
When making these savory treats, a cook can use a variety of filling ingredients. A vegetarian version, for example, could include spinach and cheese or another combination. Curried meat or vegetables are sometimes used as a filling. x000D_
The way these small pies are made is part of what makes imagawayaki so special. Many restaurants use a grill with a large mold with many circular concavities to make a lot of these small waffle-like foods. These are responsible for the food’s circular shape. x000D_
To begin, cooks usually pour a small amount of the raw, liquid dough into the circular molds’ bottoms. They will add the filling on top, in the center, after it has cooked and hardened a little. They will be careful not to let the filling touch the sides of the mold. The food may be cooked further to ensure that the dough surface closest to the grill is well browned and hardened.
A cook will typically use a small knife or other tool to flip the cooked portion of the food onto adjacent molds where more liquid dough is cooking after a period of time. The newer batch of dough circles adheres to the rest of the pie above and forms the entire imagawayaki as it bakes. Experienced cooks can flip these small sandwich items very quickly, and they may do so in front of an audience as part of a more advanced “open kitchen” demonstration.
In addition to the skill required to prepare these delicacies, maintaining the imagawayaki grill is a significant challenge. To avoid unwanted and unsanitary buildup in the small molds, employees must keep them clean. Overall, while making imagawayaki does not take a long time, it does require a lot of effort and constant attention.