Boil the beef tendon in plenty of water with 3 slices of ginger and the green part of 3 stalks of leek for about 5 minutes to eliminate the gaminess. Skim off the scum completely.

Rinse the boiled beef tendon with cold water and put into a pressure cooker with 2000 ml of water. Lock on the lid, bring to a boil and cook under pressure for 15 minutes. Leave to cool down naturally.

Chop the beni-shouga pickled red ginger into a 1 mm dice. Slice the octopus into big pieces.

Cut the cabbage into 2-3 mm wide julienne. Turn 90 degrees and chop up into 3mm dice. If you do this 1/4 of a cabbage at a time, it's easy.

1 head of cabbage chopped is about 1.2 kg worth.

Slice the green onion thinly. Peel and grate the yamaimo yam.

Take out the beef tendon from Step 2. The cooking liquid will be used as the soup stock in the batter, so skim off the scum carefully and leave to cool.

Cut the beef tendon into bite sized pieces, and simmer in the beef tendon flavoring ingredients. When the cooking liquid has reduced by half, leave to cool and absorb the flavors.

Combine the batter ingredients, and add the completely cooled down beef tendon stock little by little. If you add it all at once the batter may form lumps so add it a bit at a time.

If any lumps remain the batter will be floury, so mix well. Once the batter is mixed, add the grated yamaimo.

Pour the batter onto a heated electric griddle, and cover the top with pork belly slices.

Break an egg into a small bowl, add 2 ladle fulls of batter, 2 handfuls (about 100 g) of cabbage, some octopus, some of the beef tendon, green onion, tempura batter crumbs, and red pickled ginger.

Mix it with a spoon to incorporate air into the batter and don't over-mix. You should still see some of the egg white in the mix.

Pour the batter onto a heated griddle, and cover the top with pork belly slices.

Cook for 5 minutes, and when you can insert the spatula underneath easily turn it over for the first time. Cook for another 5 minutes, then turn over again. Do not press down on the pancake.

Cover with lots of sauce, sprinkle with bonito flakes and aonori seaweed powder, and it's done. Add mayonnaise or Japanese mustard to taste!

Use this kind of container (you can buy it at a 100 yen shop) to spread the mayonnaise. If you add about 10% milk and yogurt to the mayonnaise, it tastes great.

You can't omit Doro sauce (a kind of thick Worcestershire-type sauce)! It serves as a 'hidden flavor' in the sauce. It is quite salty, which goes well with okonomiyaki. Don't add too much. The ratio is about 10:1 tonkatsu sauce to Doro sauce.

This is tasty made with chicken bone soup stock too. Seefor the chicken stock recipe.

Make your own tempura batter crumbs.

is a version that only uses yamaimo yam and eggs in the batter.

This is a 3-layer birthday cake version!