Can you make tamagoyaki?

We have a rectangular Japanese-style omelette pan in our kitchen. These pans are called makiyakinabe (巻き焼き鍋), and they’re sometimes square rather than oblong, depending on which region they belong to. But just because we have one of these pans doesn’t mean we really know how to use it. This pan is typically used to make the Japanese rolled omelette, known as tamagoyaki, but you can also make dashimaki tamago with it, which is usually made with dashi stock, or usuyaki tamago, which is a thinner omelette, or iri-tamago, which is more like scrambled eggs. There’s certainly a knack to making rolled omelette, Japanese-style. In Jiro Dreams of Sushi, the classic documentary film of a culinary obsession, Jiro’s apprentice, Daisuke Nakazawa, speaks of how he was required to make tamagoyaki two hundred times before Jiro pronounced it fit for serving to customers. He recalls how at last, after all this practising-to-make-perfect, Jiro called him ‘shokunin’, an accomplished artisan: “When I…