Customer Reviews

Japanese Cooking: A Simple Art

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3 star:		(2)
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This is not just a great Japanese cookbook. It is a great cookbook in general. Not content to merely compile a series of recipes, Shizuo Tsuji adds descriptions of cooking techniques unique to Japanese food, insight into Japanese culture, and more importantly he imparts valuable knowledge on how to understand and appreciate Japanese cuisine.

He divides the book into two parts. The first part begins with a discussion on how meals are prepared and composed. Then he explains ingredients, tools, and techniques that are frequently used in the book. He ends part one with recipes that are intended to be a basic introduction to various types of Japanese food (each "type" employs different methods of preparation and cooking, such as frying, steaming, etc.) The recipes are traditional Japanese meals that you would encounter if you went to Japan.

Part two is all recipes, again divided into the same types that part one is divided into. However, these are slightly more complex and they build on the techniques learned in part one.

This is a book that can be used by beginners or more advanced cooks. It is definitely a useful reference for all those who love Japanese food and would like to know how to make it and how to enjoy it authentically.

I have been searching a long time for a comprehensive book on Japanese cooking because I grew up with a mother who was a fantastic cook. Unfortunately, she never used recipes or measuring devices, so I have been struggling to duplicate the many delicious dishes of my childhood to no avail. This book is the answer to my quest. The recipes are very authentic, and the author talks about the history of the various recipes and cooking techniques. This enhances the enjoyment of the beautiful cuisine. I feel like I am back home in Mom's kitchen!

If you love Japanese food, this is the book for you. More then simply a list of recipes, it really does describe Japanese cooking as an art form. Unfortunately, if you are a newcomer to Japanese cooking as I myself am, the book is not particularly useful in the kitchen. First of all, the book sacrifices ease for authenticity. This means that many of the dishes require ingredients or tools that aren't readily available at the local supermarket. However, if you want to really learn how authentic Japanese food is prepared, look no further.

While there are certainly recipes in this book, the author does not barrage you with hundreds of impossible to replicate dishes. Instead, this is the book to read if you wish to undersdand what Japanese food is and is not, and how to bring Japanese home cooking into your own home. This is a book to read, cover to cover, not one to pick up for the purpose of grabbing a couple of recipes. Of all the cookbooks I own, this is the first international cookbook that really gave me an understanding of WHAT it was that I was preparing. And that is more important than any recipe

A great cookbooks is not merely a set of recipes but a treatise on the art of cookery. A Simple Art is, quite simply, a great cookbook--equal to anything written by Julia Child, Paula Wolfert, Alice Waters, and so on. I consider it as indispensible as anything in my cookbook collection, even reference works by Harold McGee and the like. And I don't even cook Japanese food!

The first half of the book is mainly partitioned into chapters by cooking technique: a chapter on steaming, on simmering, on grilling, and so forth. Each chapter begins with a very thorough essay on the equipment you need and the dos and don'ts of the technique. The quality of advice here is rarely equalled by any other cookbook.

There's a spectacular chapter on scaling, gutting, and fileting fish, and dressing chicken. There are elaborate diagrams for four fileting techniques for both roundfish and flatfish. I have seen no other book on fish cookery (as comprehensive as Mark Bittman's and Alan Davidson's books are) that can compare to this book's thoroughness in fish prep. It's not just cutting, but there are dozens of techniques, from various methods of salting to blanching that I've seen nowhere else. Many ingredients in the book beyond fish are treated with similar thoroughness. The chapter on grilling has over a dozen techniques on how to skewer ingredients!

One of the most impressive aspects of the book is it's obsession with presentation. This is the only book I own that elaborates a systematic approach to dressing the plate. Recipes are not just concluded with an afterthought of "this dish looks great garnished with X". Rather, the text addresses each ingredient and the cooking technique concerning the how's and why's of presentation. This is, perhaps, a peculiarly Japanese phenomenon: an obsession with presentation matched by an obsession with systemization and rule-following. But is a wisdom, and technique, that can be easily adapted to any cuisine.

There are so many other wonderfully thorough discussions in the book. The author goes into some detail about the construction of meals--that is, of how one puts together a succession of courses to create a harmonious whole. This is a fascinating cookbook, a must have for the cookbook obsessed. It's a great reference work covering topics of cookery overlooked by many of the great cookbooks in English. Yes, this is a book about Japanese cuisine, but the knowledge here applies well beyond it.

We have used this book for years. Even in rural Oklahoma most of the recipies are possible with a little help from mail order and trips to Tulsa. Last year for the first time in many years I had two business trips to Japan. That was a real sanity check for this book - and yes it tells you how to do the real thing. At one lunch when we were eating cold udon noodles in a basket I looked at my Japanese hosts and said quite honestly - "you know I make this exact thing at home." They were amazed, but because of this book it is true. This should be everyone's first book on Japanese cooking.

A very interesting book that provides an overview of all aspects of Japanese cooking, from its history and all necessary equipment to, of course, the recipes themselves. There is an especially helpful section techniques with fish, demonstrating proper ways to cut and prepare fish for presentation as sushi or cooking. Also nice are the color plates that give an idea of the importance of aesthetics in Japanese cooking, an idea that is developed in the text. Great for serious and casual chefs, as well as those interested in the history of food.

`Japanese Cooking A Simple Art' by prominent Japanese culinary educator Shizuo Tsuji belongs to a very select group of excellent national / regional cookbooks such as `Mastering the Art of French Cooking' by Julia Child, `Elements of Classic Italian Cuisine' by Marcella Hazan, and `From My Mexican Kitchen' by Diana Kennedy. The distinguishing feature of all four of these books plus a select few others is that they give an authoritative and relatively complete survey of provisions, equipment, principles, and techniques of their selected cuisine.

In fact, Mr. Tsuji fits this archetype even better than some of the other titles in this group, especially since Diana Kennedy, for one, has written several volumes on Mexican cuisine, so the volume I cite is only her most recent and the one most dedicated to Mexican cooking techniques rather than simply recipes and regionality. In presenting the underlying principles of Japanese cooking, Mr. Tsuji's closest western writer is Ms. Hazan.

Although the Japanese have gone much further in wrapping their cuisine and culinary techniques with the doctrines of religion, a student of Italian cuisine will tell you that the Abbruzis and the Sicilians and the Tuscans among others are no slouches when it comes to using food to celebrate life and spirituality. Mr. Tsuji tells us of the Japanese practice of formal dinners with as many as a dozen small dishes, yet the Abbruzis pull out even more stops when they call for at least thirty dishes for major celebratory banquets and the Sicilians who must have seven fishes in their Christmas Eve dinners.

Western culinary experts have even put a lot of thought into the Japanese practice of small portions. A quick read of Thomas Keller's `The French Laundry Cookbook' will show that the Japanese have no monopoly on deep reflection on cooking.

All of these comparisons are meant to show the prospective reader that as different as Japanese cuisine is from those of Western Europe and the New World, they both deal with the same act of preparing and eating food, and one can celebrate the similarities as much as one marvels at the differences.

The author very cleverly ties together East and West by recruiting the great American culinary essayist M.F. K. Fisher to write the introduction. And, to insure that Ms. Fisher knew of what she spoke, he treated her to two weeks of eating the very best food Japan had to offer.

This excellent book is divided into four sections. The first is the introduction by Ms. Fisher and the author's preface. The second section of 270 pages is comprised of expositions on the major equipment, ingredients, and techniques of Japanese cooking. The third section of 135 pages is a collection of recipes which the author says can be treated exactly like a Western cookbook where you can select a recipe according to your interest or whim and have fun with it. The fourth section is the appendices of American sources for Japanese provisions, a table of seasonal Japanese fish and substitution possibilities, and weights and measures. The color plates in the first section gives an excellent picture of Japanese provisions and plating illustrations.

In the second section, `Part One', there is a chapter on `The Japanese Meal' which lays out the composition of the formal courses of a classic meal. This is followed by an excellent 50-page guide to Japanese ingredients. This is superior to any similar presentation I have seen in either number of foodstuffs discussed or in the depth of information given about each provision. Chapters follow this on Utensils and Knives. The chapter on knives is essential to Western novices to Japanese cooking, as Japanese knife styles are very different from our familiar French archetypes. In fact, one can probably divide the culinary world into those cuisines that use the Japanese style of knife versus those who use the French arsenal. I suspect truly expert knife skills can only be learned by observing and copying an expert. In fact, Mr. Tsuji says the teaching practice of `old school' Japanese master chefs is not to describe technique to apprentices, but to simply demonstrate and have the student imitate. Very Zen. Mr. Tsuji does give line drawings of many techniques, including ways to handle the major types of Japanese kitchen knives. This alone sets him apart from most other manuals and puts him in the company of the very best such as Ms. Child and Ms. Kennedy.

Based on my very limited knowledge of Japanese cooking before reading this book, I believe the author has covered the whole spectrum of dishes, including stock making (dashi), soups, sashimi, grilling and pan frying, steaming, simmering, deep frying, salads, one pot cooking (hot pot), rice, sushi, noodles, pickling, sweets, tea, and sake.

Given the size of the book, my guess is that the author just skims the surface of the full range of recipes, although I do believe he has covered the full range of Japanese techniques. There are excellent line drawings covering the dismemberment of just about every type of fish you may imagine. My only surprise was that the wok did not even make an appearance in this book. This book is authoritative enough for me to believe that the wok is much more a completely Chinese invention than it is a pan-Asian utensil.

Very highly recommended to all students of world food.

This is an excellent book with an absolute wealth of information on ingredients, cooking techniques, background information and presentation. Several colour plates compliment the recipes but I would have liked more of them. Some menu planning ideas and lots of line drawings illustrating technique. Rather short section on sushi - look elsewhere for that.

Tsuji's cookbook is the only Japanese cookbook you'll ever need. It covers, in great detail, Nihon-ryoori - traditional Japanese cooking. You will NOT find most home-style cooking or street-vendor foods (such as ramen or okonomiyaki) here. Tsuji's culinary school in Japan is to Japanese cooking what the Cordon Bleu is to French; you wouldn't expect your "maman" or "grand-mere" to cook like a Cordon Bleu chef (unless, of course, she was one); neither would your "okaasan" or "obaasan" cook like Tsuji's cookbook teaches. At the same time, Tsuji attempts to make both the preparation and the appreciation of Japanese haute cuisine more approachable. It is best to read it through, in order to gain an understanding of the style of cooking, before starting to actually use the recipes. There are some great color plates, too, that show some examples of presentation (very important in Nihon-ryoori) as well as showing some of the ingredients used. There are some snack-type foods here, too, but mainly ones that have been around for a good bit, such as yakitori. All in all, it provides an excellent overview of traditional Japanese cooking prior to the fast-food invasion.