Customer Reviews

Cooking with Japanese Foods

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Devotion to natural elements and authentic Japanese processes makes this an interesting read. But not a great cookbook. The ingredients are hard to find (even in Japan), and the level of cooking is mediocre. (The same ingredients are recommended over and over.) Plus, with very few illustrations, and presentation as important as flavor, this is a cookbook best for information about Japanese foods, not cooking.

Prospective purchasers should be aware that this is not really a cookery book in the usual sense. Rather it is an introduction to many ingredients and food products that are largely unique to Japanese cuisine. Some are fairly well known, Soy sauce and Miso, for example, but there are a lot of obscure and hard to find items. There are recipes using the ingredients in question but even these are, for the most part, not traditional Japanese recipes but rather the authors's own creations which utilize these foodstuffs so as to conform to their food philosophy (which is largely vegetarian). Personally, though I found reading about the various ingredients quite interesting, I wasn't in much of a rush to try many of the recipes such as 'Lentil loaf' or 'Mock Thousand Island Dressing' made with barley miso and brown rice vinegar. An interesting book for those with a keen interest in Japanese cuisine but probably a bit too specialized for the average reader.