Customer Reviews

Japanese Cooking: Contemporary & Traditional [Simple, Delicious, and Vegan]

5 star:		(13)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This is a great cookbook. As a Japanese-American and a vegan, this is by far the best vegetarian japanese cookbook I've come across.

The veg-anized recipies in this book mimic the real thing--the Japanese curry out of this cookbook tastes the same as I remember the beef/pork/chicken version tasting. The ramen recipe is as close to the real thing as I can imagine, and I'm not referring to the 6 for a dollar insta-packs from the supermarket.

The author includes traditional and modern foods, and recipes which are tradionally vegetarian and not. Most of the ingredients can be bought at your local supermarket. This is the book to get for healthy, completely vegetarian Japanse food.

I came across this book while researching vegan recipes for a family member who is on a really restricted diet. I am not a vegan, but I have loved every recipe from this book that I've made. The maze gohan (Japanese pilaf) and Yasai Zosui (mixed vegetable 'risotto') have become some of my favorite foods.

The book is nicely laid out and it's the perfect size book. It's long enough to contain a wealth of recipes, but not so large that it is unwieldy and awkward to actually have in the cooking area. The directions are extremely clear, and the author does a good job of explaining unfamiliar ingredients.

Vegan or not, this is one of my favorite cookbooks.

This is my favorite cookbook. The recipes are simple, healthy, and they don't taste like they are missing anything.

After becoming a vegan, I thought that I would be deprived of all the tastes that I grew up with. I happened upon this book at Borders and have been pleasantly surprised by every recipe that I have tried. Even my anti-vegan sister loves this book.

The recipe for gyoza is a real winner.

It's hard to search for a cookbook when you can't view it personally so I took a chance buying this and am extremely happy with it! The recipes are authentic and easy. There aren't any photographs but a few drawing to illustrate technique. The recipes are the core of Japanese cooking and the ingredients are consistant and easy to find. Exactly what I was looking for and would definatly say it was not a waste of money. This is getting alot of use.

It's a pretty cool little book, with the theory of Japanese cooking and eating, explained earnestly and clearly. Yes, it does call for ingredients that you'll have to schlep to an Asian market to go get, but many of them (miso, nori, sushi rice, tofu) are easily found in a grocery store, and the special ingredients (for which you do need to make a trip) are explained in such a way that you'll know just how to use them. There's a couple of recipes that do call for outright omnisubs, like vegan mayo and vegan sausage, but that's only two.

So far, I'm fairly pleased, because the author has made it easy to access Japanese cooking, eating, and thinking, while showing us all how it's done in your own kitchen, with what you have around the house. That's the other part: you don't need special equipment.

I have owned this cookbook for many years now, and it is one of my very favorites-- friendly and appealing. The elegant recipes are simple, unfussy, always delicious. And they lend themselves well to improvisation. I agree with those who say that these are recipes that never have you missing meat or fish. The "vegan"ness of these recipes seems completely natural, unlike other vegan cookbooks which are so often trying to create vegan versions of meat classics, to varying degrees of success.

In fact, if you like Japanese food, you might find this cookbook to be an excellent segue into going completely vegan.

My favorites are the cozy, hearty soba noodle soups, so perfect for a winter's day, and featuring any number of different vegetables.

Yum!

I really love this book of recipes. I've been looking for Japanese cookbooks that don't rely on meat or fish, and this is the one. There are delicious and simple recipes in here from noodles, salads, soups, tofu, donburi, tempura, even homemade Japanese curry or gyoza from scratch. The only downside is that there are zero pictures in the book of the foods. But with the selection here, that really does not matter!!!

Unfortunately these are the types of things that you can't catch when you download a sample of a book, and only find once you purchase it - the ebook layout is awful and clunky. Recipes are spaced weirdly, ingredients are missing, and the layout just needs to be reworked for the digital format.

Other than that, the recipes look pretty decent. Some slightly esoteric ingredients, but if you live near a Japanese store you'll have no problem tracking them down.

I have made about 10 of the recipes so far, and every one is so delicious. Konyakku is one of my new favorite foods, and the recipe for the curry udon is super good. Japanese curry is very unique, and the flavor and sweetness of this one is just like the ones I've had in restaurants. I also never realized it, but there are really no spices in Japanese cooking, all of the flavors come from fresh ingredients and various sauces. The glossary is also excellent (and very helpful!) to have cuz it explains a lot about various Japanese cooking/food words. If you're vegan and love Japanese food, get this book!

It's really hard to find vegetarian/vegan Japanese cookbooks so I was happy to find this one. The recipes I've tried from it have all been good and I look forward to trying them all. The author makes it easy to customize many recipes with your veggies and protein of choice. I wish it had pictures though (but that would significantly affect the price), and that she gave the vegetarian versions on the recipes she omitted egg from. All in all it's an excellent find for vegetarians/vegans who love Japanese food.