If you patronize Jap restaurants, I believe this should not be unfamiliar to you. Hotate Mentaiyaki !! It’s actually baked/grilled scallops with cheese and fish roe (ebiko). And because I liked it so much and they are always so expensive at the restaurants, it make more sense to replicate this at home, isn’t it ? In actual fact, you would be surprised at how easy it is to beef up this dish at home at a fraction of the price that you would have to pay as compared to the restaurants. All you need are the scallops (with shells), some cheese slices, Japanese mayonnaise and some ebiko. The taste is 99.99999% similar to that from the restaurants. Hahaha !!
The only setback is perhaps it’s not that easy to find the scallops with shells. So usually if I manage to find some, I would wash and clean the shells after eating and store them in the fridge for future use. So the next time I wanna prepare this again, I just need to get the scallops only which are more readily available and recycle the shells. Another hard-to-get would perhaps be the ebiko. You probably can find this only in Japanese supermarkets and they do sell in larger quantity which you might not need to use that much or so often. So what I did was to grab those Ebiko sushi from the sushi kiosks, which probably costs like 50cents a piece and had a couple of them, depending on how much you like it to go with your scallops. I gotten like 2 Ebiko sushi for 5 pieces of such scallops though.
If you have the habit of washing your scallops (those without shells) before preparing them like me, you have had to pat them very dry with a paper towel before you send them for baking in the oven. Otherwise, the water will seep out during the baking and you might have some watery scallops at the bottom while the cheese cooks on the top. What I did another way was to rinse the scallops under water, pat them semi-dry and place them in the chiller till they are completely dry before baking them.
Tadah !!! So yummylicious that I could have few of these at one go !! And because it’s so affordable to do it at home, you can have as many as you like !!
Am so looking forward to the long weekend to catch up on all that I gotta do… in particular, my beauty sleep and baking !! Hahahaha !! How about you ??
Hotate Mentaiyaki
Ingredients
- 5 pcs of scallops with shells
- 6-7 pcs of cheddar cheese slices
- 4 tbsps of Japanese Mayonnaise
- some ebiko fish roe
- some shredded parsley optional
Instructions
- Clean the scallops with shells to remove the dirt and wipe them completely dry. Alternatively, leave them in the chiller to dry up the moisture completely before using.
- Tear the cheese slices into small pieces and use them to cover the scallops completely. Top it up further with the Japanese mayonnaise and fish roe.
- Baked them in a preheated oven at 180 degrees C for 15-18 minutes till the cheese has completely melted with a slight golden brown.
- Garnish with shredded parsley on the the scallops (optional). Serve hot.
