Wednesday, July 25, 2007

takoyaki and bazaar

I went shopping for a takoyaki-p'an the other day. I'm going to try again today. Anyone know where to get one of these things in Seoul?

For anyone who doesn't know: a takoyaki-p'an is a sort of tray, reminiscent of a muffin tin, used for making the Japanese fast food takoyaki (fried octopus balls... yeah-- octopi have balls). The depressions in the takoyaki-p'an are often in a three-by-three square arrangement, allowing you to make nine at once on a normal-sized gas range. Instead of being muffin-shaped, though, the depressions in a takoyaki-p'an are hemispherical. You pour batter into the them, allow a little cooking to take place, and as the bottoms of the balls firm up, you take two chopsticks and roll the balls a bit to allow more of the uncooked batter to cook. As you keep rolling, the batter eventually forms nine edible spheres. You then plop those puppies on a plate, cover them in two kinds of sauce plus dried fish flakes, and serve.

Wikipedia has an entry on takoyaki featuring a picture of prepared takoyaki and a 4x4 takoyaki-p'an.

Unless I get some comments soon, I'm going to try Namdaemun Market and the nearby department stores. I wouldn't normally shop in a department store, but the takoyaki-p'an appears to be a specialty item, and I need it for tomorrow's bazaar.

Which reminds me: BAZAAR TOMORROW!

I'm assuming you know what university "Smoo" is. We'll be holding the bazaar on the first floor of the Social Education Building (sahwae gyoyuk-gwan) from 1:30PM to 3:30PM. You are all cordially invited to come and help our students practice English. I might or might not be selling artwork there... if I do, I'll probably whore myself out and sell for cheap this time around.


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