The Complete Book of Japanese Cooking, the Traditions, Ingredients and Recipes

This is a great cook book. I have made many of the dishes in it, and everyone rants about how good the food is. The miso soup recipe in particular is fantastic, and I'm regularly asked to make it for the people in my house. I would definitely buy this book again.

You can get very good basic Japanese recipes from this book. I really like the miso soup recipe and the okonomiyaki recipe. The first half of the book is devoted to the concepts of Japanese cooking and does a good job of explaining the effect the different seasons and regions have on the cuisine. But I bought the book a second time (lost the first copy) for the okonimiyaki (it's sort of like a cabbage pancake) recipe. It's easy and cheap and tasty and perfect for entertaining.

[Review written in May 2005] I read this book several years ago, when I first bought it. I remember liking it at the time, although I wasn't overly impressed with it's breadth and depth on any given area or topic. In any case, this book came to mind because this past weekend I grabbed a dozen oysters and 2 lbs of littleneck clams on a whim from a local book store. The oysters I just shucked and ate with a squeeze of lemon and a dash of CPEVO. As for the clams ... rather than making my usual pasta with fresh white clam sauce, I decided to cruise around in my library for different things to do with them. While browsing, I happened upon a recipe by Kazuko ... which is essentially a cold salad of baby clams (steamed 5 mins & de-shelled), seaweed and wilted scallions, and dressed with a lightly sweetened sauce of white miso paste, English mustard, sake, a touch of sugar, and rice vinegar (I can post specifics for anyone who's interested). I had everything I needed already on hand, so I went for it. Although the recipe itself wasn't laid out in the clearest and most efficient/logical manner, the end result was outstanding, and will doubtless become part of my semi-regular repitoire (because clams are in my blood and are a local specialty). I'll revise my review next time with more details on the book, but for now I'll give it the thumbs up. There's a lot of crap out there, and this appears to be one of the ones that's somewhat better than most. Hardly stellar, but still decent. One thing I do recall the book being anemic on is sashimi and sushi techniques ... and buying/handling/serving raw fish in particular. There's a LOT more to safety, regarding sushi, than 99% of people realize, and this book seems (if I recall) to take a rather lax attitude to all the fine points and techniques required to select, prepare and serve raw fish safely and correctly ... he just jumps right into how to prepare sushi rice and slice fish. WRONG ! There is LOTS and LOTS more information you need to know before you even get to that stage ... that's why sushi chefs train for YEARS to learn their craft, and that's why you should avoid faux sushi prepared by the local non-japanese goomba at your local supermarket.

I love this book, and still use recipes from/based on it from time to time. The best things about this book are how it will introduce various base ingredients and even some Japanese food cluture. Using this book you can make more things from scratch, and that's always better than something from a bottle or can imported or not. The color photos are so beautiful it makes a great coffee table book if you give this to someone that doesn't cook as well. ;)

This is a great book for Japanese recipes because you can SEE the ingredients from the photos and see what the recipes will look like when they are prepared. Makes your mouth water! Lots of good background info on Japanese cooking too. A delight.