My first attempt at tamagoyaki. I'm quite happy with the flavour, which has the right amount of sweetness for me. It isn't the least bit presentable but I'm sure I'll improve with practise. #cookingat 

The mixture was also too soft, which made rolling difficult. I think there's a bit too much water in the recipe, and the dash of Shaoxing cooking wine I added probably made it worse. I prefer a firmer egg, so I'll reduce the water by a tablespoon next time.

A lot of tamagoyaki recipes include mirin (Japanese sweet rice wine). I don't have any mirin, but I do have mijiu (Chinese rice wine), which is similar to sake, and you can make a mirin substitute with sake and sugar. I added a little over half a teaspoon of mijiu without sweetening it; there's already enough sugar in the recipe.

Another challenge is that the mijiu I have is a "cooking wine", which has an obscene amount of salt added to make it undrinkable and therefore legal for grocery store shelves. Even omitting the salt, I'm pretty sure I ended up with more than the pinch of salt the recipe calls for. The flavours balanced out in the end.

Photos of my cooking action is here - http://asylum-01.tumblr.com/post/120713602863/tamagoyaki

Recipe is here - http://www.fiction-food.com/2013/09/tamagoyaki-grilled-rolled-egg-from.html

A recipe that uses mirin is here (with step by step pictures) - http://justhungry.com/basics-tamagoyaki-or-atsuyaki-tamago-japanese-sweet-omelette