Mastering the Art of Japanese Home Cooking

I’ve bought more than a few cookbooks, but I used this one book more than most of the rest combined including my well worn, stained copy of Betty Crocker. Lots of easy recipes I never knew I could make in so little time and so inexpensively. The soups and soba dishes are as good as any I enjoyed in my favorite restaurants. And so much healthier! I never mastered home made pasta or tortillas, but my first attempts at home made udon noodles were great and so much fun. I’m trying the spaghetti dishes he included tomorrow. Morimoto’s humor and grandmother tips made it so much fun to read and added so many incredibly useful insights.

I have a Japanese mother... she is a really bad cook. In fact, I thought I hated fish because the fish my Mom made was soooo gross growing up. What Japanese lady does NOT know how to cook fish??? My Mom, that is who! Anyway, I love the authentic Japanese food my Mom's friends would cook and the stuff you can get at authentic Japanese restaurants, and realized that my Japanese Mom, who could not even cook fish, probably was not the one to learn Japanese cooking from, so I learned from watching her friends and from the internet. This book refines, simplifies, and explains so much more thoroughly what so many native Japanese cooks probably take for granted as a way to do things. A simple example is just rice washing. My Mom just threw the rice in the pot and swished it around a few times to get some of the talc off, did not measure the water, just cooked it. Dry rice, wet rice, sometimes still crunchy rice... not so good rice. The book describes cleaning rice - a staple in Japanese cooking - as a job that Mr. Morimoto did for years before becoming the cook that he is. Starting from basics, such as washing the rice until the water runs clear, and measuring the water, which may not seem like a big deal, but more than likely makes a big difference in the end product. All the little tips that a Japanese cook may do but not feel it is necessary to tell you and things that the internet teachers may not pass on because either they don't know or don't do it that way, etc. All these things are explained in the book. Lots of good basic recipes and not a whole lot of weird things that have hard-to-obtain ingredients.

Of the half dozen+ Japanese cookbooks I own, this is the one I use the most. Like all great cuisines, Japanese cooking encompasses many styles and levels of refinement. A typical Westerner browsing a book on traditional (washoku) or elevated (kaiseki) styles could be forgiven for thinking that Japanese food is something best admired from afar, with a multitude of small dishes requiring prep to exacting standards and specific exotic ingredients, best prepared by professional chefs or full time housepeople with few other responsibilities. Morimoto - while clearly well-versed in those traditions - sticks to recipes with global appeal that "normal people" can reasonably get on the table. Soups, noodles, rice bowls (donburi), and home versions of restaurant fare like tempura, yakitori, and sushi predominate... alongside a few more washoku-style dishes as well. (Morimoto does *not* provide ramen recipes, to his credit - preparing ramen well is a book in itself, and very time-consuming.) He uses authentic ingredients when truly necessary and reasonably available -there's no substitute for real dashi, for example, and the components aren't hard to obtain these days. But he steers clear of specifying fragile Japanese produce that would be unobtainable to most. Overall, these are recipes that a non-fanatic cook with an internet connection and maybe a passable Asian market somewhere nearby can easily get on the table.I have no doubt that Morimoto admires the fine books out there by Tsuji, Andoh, Harumi, and others. I'm sure he would be thrilled if you bought his book, cooked some recipes, and decided you needed another author to go deeper into the art and history of Japanese cuisine. But if you want just one Japanese cookbook to actually *cook* from and not just admire, this is the one to get.