Japanese Family-Style Recipes [Hardcover]

Hiroko Urakami (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 15, 1992

This beautifully illustrated collection of fifty-three recipes represents the best of Japanese home cooking, ranging from soups and main dishes to snacks and desserts. You'll find mouth-watering Chicken-and-Egg Donburi, delicious Yellowtail Teriyaki, and simple yet satisfying Salmon Tea Rice. Dishes Westerners have come to love include that simmering cauldron of beef, tofu, and vegetables known as sukiyaki; grilled chicken kebabs (yakitori); and crispy vegetable tempura.

Sure to appeal to America's renewed interest in the virtues of plain home cooking, Japanese Family-Style Recipes presents wholesome, tasty dishes that are not only low in calories but easily prepared by the busy cook in the average kitchen. Gone are the elaborate, time-consuming food preparation and arrangement methods typically associated with Japanese cooking. Written in a clear and practical style, each recipe is accompanied by a tantalizing color photo of the completed dish. Hints for ingredient substitutions are provided, and as a special bonus to the health-conscious cook, a recipe table providing a nutritional analysis per serving.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

A characteristic Japanese family meal, Tokyo-born Urakami tells us, includes ``a main dish of fish or meat, a side dish of braised vegetables, and a vinegared salad, accompanied by steamed rice and soup.'' The 53 recipes here feature vegetables such as sauteed burdock and braised daikon, as well as familiar dishes like yakitori , but as this book is meant for English-speaking cooks everywhere, Americans may find curious the instruction to ``coat the pot well with beef suet'' in the recipe for sukiyaki . Likewise, for ``marinated spicy fresh-water smelt,'' readers will want to know the size of the smelts (not given), and may be nonplussed by its substitute, ``horse mackerel fillets, cut into slices.'' The recipe for breaded fried swordfish lists only ``breadcrumbs for coating fish'' instead of panko , the coarse Japanese breadcrumbs that give a typically crunchy surface. Information is rather lacking on Japanese ingredients; in the refreshing-sounding recipe for salad with tofu dressing, the author assumes our familiarity with ``deep-fried tofu pouches'' and `` konnyaku (devil's tongue)sic .'' It is necessary to read the front matter; a recipe for the broth called dashi , used in more than half the recipes, appears under ``Cooking Notes.'' Helpfully, each recipe has its own color illustration.

Copyright 1992 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

About the Author

HIROKO URAKAMI attended the Tsuji Cooking School before embarking on a career in cooking. She has taught and demonstrated Japanese cooking both at home and abroad for many years. She has served as an instructor of Japanese cooking in the Department of Extension, University of California, Riverside and for more than ten years has hosted the radio program "Hiroko's Joyful Quick Cooking" on Radio Pacific Japan, California. She is an instructor at Yomiuri Culture Center and other culture centers and the author of many cookbooks. She lives with her husband, an economics professor, in Tokyo.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 120 pages
• Publisher: Kodansha USA; 1St Edition edition (June 15, 1992)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 4770015836
• ISBN-13: 978-4770015839
• Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 9.3 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.3 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (10 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #558,038 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

28 of 29 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars THE Japanese Cookbook To Buy!, April 4, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Japanese Family-Style Recipes (Hardcover)

This cookbook has recipes for food that Japanese people actually do eat in everyday life. While fish is a big part of the Japanese diet, sushi is a delicacy in Japan much as it is elsewhere in the world. This book offers some sushi recipes but more importantly offers the kind of stock Japanese meals that families really eat. I speak from experience, I stayed in Japan with a Japanese family for 2 months. Many of my favorite dishes from that stay are in this book. The instructions are clear and concise, the pictures are beautiful. If you appreciate Japanese food and want to make some meals for yourself this is the book for you.

21 of 21 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars My Favorite Japanese Cookbook, December 17, 1999

By 

Robert A. Bowers (SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Japanese Family-Style Recipes (Hardcover)

My wife and I received this book as a gift from a Japanese exchange student 3 years ago. She used it to cook Japanese meals for us and now we use it at least once a week ourselves. We have purchased several other Japanese cookbooks since, but this is the very best we have seen. These are recipes that the Japanese actually prepare for themselves every day. Just an easy to understand cookbook with very delicious recipes. The photos of each recipe are also well photographed and appetizing.

16 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Tasty, REAL Japanese food, November 30, 1997

By A Customer

This review is from: Japanese Family-Style Recipes (Hardcover)

When I was on business trips in Japan, my Japanese colleagues took good care of me. So in addition to the "fancy" food that guests usually get (Kaiseki-ryori--the kind where neither the host nor the waiters are really sure what the ingredients are), I got a good sampling of what regular people *really* eat in Japan. I found the "home-style" food to be tasty, even hearty, and eminently healthy too.

On the last day of my last trip (alas, I'm not going back for a while!), I saw this book at the airport and bought it. Am I ever glad I did! It's typically Japanese in that you see what you get before you get it. Just as Japanese restaurants have models of the dishes outside, this book has appealing pictures of every single recipe. The recipes are easy to follow and the results are delicious. Even my Japan-sceptical boyfriend likes them.