Tamagoyaki - Japanese omelette

Dinner parties in the comfort of your own home is my new favorite past time - minus the clean up afterwards of course!  To celebrate 2 of my friends birthday this month, I offered to cook an all out Japanese dinner:)  Unfortunately, not many pictures of the dishes were taken and the only evidence of last nights Japanese dinner was my version of "Tamago (egg) yaki - a Japanese omelette often found in bento lunch boxes all throughout Japan.

I had watched videos on how to make this special Tamagoyaki and hoped my first attempt of this dish was satisfying for my friendly taste testers.

Let's begin! 

Ingredients

1. 3/4cup dashi stock (recipe found in http://thekitchenrunner01.blogspot.ca/2013/06/traditional-miso-ramen-dashi-stock-char.html)

2.  4 eggs

3.  1tbsp mirin

4.  1tsp of soya sauce

5.  pinch of salt

6.  6-7 leaves of arugula (optional) minced

7.  olive oil

Directions:

1. In a small bowl, place dashi stock, mirin, salt & soya souce.

2.  In another bowl, crack and whisk 4 eggs, add dashi stock mixture and minced arugula to egg mixture

3.  Since I do not have the square pan typically used to make the Tamago-yaki, I used my regular pan.  Turn heat to medium high and coat pan with a layer of olive oil using a paper towel.

4.  Once pan in hot, spoon in a thin layer of egg mixture.  Allow to cook and begin to roll one end of the egg omelette to the other end into a roll.  Coat more olive oil onto the pan and add another thin layer of egg mixture into the pan, allowing the mixture to seep underneath the roll.  Cook through and begin to roll egg omelette to one end to the other, creating a fatter egg roll.  Repeat process until all egg mixture is used.  Don't worry if your egg roll breaks or is not perfect, we will fix it! 

5.  Once egg roll omelette is complete, place it on at bamboo sushi mat and roll it into a rectangular shape.  Be careful! It's hot!.  Keep the egg roll in the bamboo mat until it cools down.  This will help shape the tamagoyaki into a desired shape.

6.  See?!  this is how it should look once cooled in the bamboo mat. :) 

7.  Next, cut in 1/2" in length and serve :) 

Bite into a piece of the Tamago-yaki, its superbly light and fluffy, bursting of flavour from the mirin and dashi stock.  This is what makes the Japanese Tamago-yaki so desirable and so different from any other omelette:) 

Enjoy!  I am happy to report my friends had enjoyed the imaginary trip to Japan through the different flavours and dishes I had to offer :)