Okonomiyaki and a web of relationships

For okonomiyaki, you’ll need flour, an egg, stock, a potato and your chosen seafood. I used king prawns.

Today’s recipe is from Memorial by Bryan Washington. The book follows Benson and Mike, who are in a relationship that is starting to fall apart. In the middle of all of this, Mike’s mother comes to visit from Japan, just as Mike is leaving to be with his dying father, back in Japan. Benson is now stuck alone with his boyfriend’s mother.

There is a lot of food in this book. Mike’s mother, fed up with Benson’s lack of skills in the kitchen, teaches him to cook Japanese dishes. Meanwhile, Mike cooks food for his sick and dying father in Japan, including okonomiyaki, the dish I am making today.

For the batter, mix flour, egg, baking powder, stock, and grated potato in a big bowl. Let it rest in the fridge for two hours.

While I’m waiting for the batter to rest, let’s talk about why Memorial has touched me so deeply. It’s not just because it ticks all the boxes my millennial heart desires: a gay relationship between a Black and Asian man, Japanese culture and minimalistic language. It’s more than that. It’s how Washington manages to capture something so true about our relationships with each other: relationships exist in their context to other relationships we have with other people.

While Benson gets to know Mike’s mother, he grows closer to Mike, too. Meanwhile, Mike is learning more about his father’s relationship to his mother and sees that what he thought about them as a child was a very simplified version of the truth. And while Benson, in Mike’s absence, starts seeing someone else, he finds something new inside himself — changing his relationship with Mike.

While you’re processing all of this, take out the batter from the fridge and add your sea food. Heat up oil in a pan and add the batter, frying it over medium heat for about 4 minutes on each side.

I think we often forget that romantic relationships don’t exist in a vacuum. Often, romantic stories have us believe that love is an intimate thing, untouched by others, only existing between the two people involved with each other. We forget that our relationships are more like a collection of strings. Everybody tugs on their end of the strings, changing the entire web. At the risk of sounding a little hippy-dippy: everyone is connected to each other. We are all writing the story together. Even romantic love stories.

Serve the okonomiyaki with ketchup and soy sauce. Share it with friends and family.