Japanese Farm Food [Hardcover]

Nancy Singleton Hachisu (Author)

Book Description

Release date: September 4, 2012

Japanese Farm Food offers a unique look into life on a Japanese farm through 165 simple, clear-flavored recipes along with personal stories and over 100 stunning photographs. It is a book about love, community, and life in rural Japan. 

Gourmand World Cookbook Awards 2012: USA Winner, Best Japanese Cuisine Book

"Our life centers on the farm and the field. We eat what we grow." --Nancy Singleton Hachisu,

Japanese Farm Food offers a unique window into life on a Japanese farm through the simple, clear-flavored recipes cooked from family crops and other local, organic products. The multitude of vibrant images by Kenji Miura of green fields, a traditional farmhouse, antique baskets, and ceramic bowls filled with beautiful, simple dishes are interwoven with Japanese indigo fabrics to convey an intimate, authentic portrait of life and food on a Japanese farm. With a focus on fresh and thoughtfully sourced ingredients, the recipes in Japanese Farm Food are perfect for fans of farmers' markets, and for home cooks looking for accessible Japanese dishes. Personal stories about family and farm life complete this incredible volume.

American born and raised, Nancy Singleton Hachisu lives with her husband and teenage sons on a rural Japanese farm, where they prepare these 160 bright, seasonal dishes. The recipes are organized logically with the intention of reassuring you how easy it is to cook Japanese food. Not just a book about Japanese food, Japanese Farm Food is a book about love, life on the farm, and community. Covering everything from pickles and soups to noodles, rice, and dipping sauces, with a special emphasis on vegetables, Hachisu demystifies the rural Japanese kitchen, laying bare the essential ingredients, equipment, and techniques needed for Japanese home cooking.

"Nancy Hachisu is...intrepid. Outrageously creative. Intensely passionate. Committed. True and real. I urge you to cook from this book with abandon, but first read it like a memoir, chapter by chapter, and you will share in the story of a modern-day family, a totally unique and extraordinary one." --Patricia Wells

"This book is both an intimate portrait of Nancy's life on the farm, and an important work that shows the universality of an authentic food culture." --Alice Waters

"The modest title Japanese Farm Food turns out to be large, embracing and perhaps surprising. Unlike the farm-to-table life as we know it here, where precious farm foods are cooked with recipes, often with some elaboration, real farm food means eating the same thing day after day when it’s plentiful, putting it up for when it's not, and cooking it very, very simply because the farm demands so much more time in the field than in the kitchen. This beautiful, touching, and ultimately common sense book is about a life that's balanced between the idea that a life chooses you and that you in turn choose it and then live it wholeheartedly and largely. Thank you, Nancy, for sharing your rich, intentional and truly inspiring life." --Deborah Madison

"Nancy Hachisu’s amazing depth of knowledge of Japanese food and culture shines through in every part of this book. You will feel as if you live next door to her...savoring and learning her down-to-earth approach to cooking and to loving food." --Hiroko Shimbo

"Taking a peek into Nancy Hachisu's stunning Japanese Farm Food is like entering a magical world. It's a Japan that used to be, not the modern Japan defined by the busyness of Tokyo, but a more timeless place, a place whose rhythms are set by seasons and traditions and the work of the farm. Japanese Farm Food is so much more than a cookbook. This book has soul. Every vegetable, every tool has a story. Who grew this eggplant? Who made this soy sauce? Nancy doesn't have to ask, "Where does my food come from?" She knows. Here's a woman who grows and harvests her own rice, grain by grain. Not that she asks or expects us to do the same at all. What she does offer is a glimpse into her life in rural Japan, with its shoji screens and filtered light, and recipes from her farm kitchen that you can't wait to try." --Elise Bauer, SimplyRecipes.com

"Japanese Farm Food is a lovely book about the culture, landscape, and food of Japan, a true insider's view of the Japanese kitchen, from farm to table, by a passionate and talented writer." --Michael Ruhlman

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Nancy Singleton Hachisu moved from California to Japan in 1988, with the intention to stay for a year, learn Japanese, and return to the United States. Instead, she fell in love with a farmer, the culture, and the food, and has made the country her home. Nancy has taught cooking classes for nearly 20 years, and also runs a children's English immersion program that prepares home-cooked meals with local ingredients. She has been a Slow Food convivium leader for more than a decade, and a food-education leader for Slow Food Japan for the last several years. Nancy, her husband, and three sons live in an 80-year-old traditional farmhouse on an organic farm in rural Japan.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 400 pages
• Publisher: Andrews McMeel Publishing (September 4, 2012)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1449418295
• ISBN-13: 978-1449418298
• Product Dimensions: 8 x 1.6 x 9.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 3.1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (44 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,008 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #2 in Books > Cookbooks, Food & Wine > Regional & International > Asian > Japanese
  • #9 in Books > Cookbooks, Food & Wine > Vegetables & Vegetarian > Vegetables
  • #14 in Books > Cookbooks, Food & Wine > Natural Foods

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

69 of 74 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars An alluring, beautiful book that offers do-able, hands-on, straightforward recipes with Japanese techniques September 9, 2012

By I Do The Speed Limit TOP 1000 REVIEWER

Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase

As an avid gardener I'm always looking for cucumber, eggplant, leafy greens and pickle recipes. What simple, distinctively new (to me--an American cook) recipes I found for the overflowing bounty from my gardens! Plus there are plenty of new ways with fish, chicken, meat and eggs.

UPDATE Jan. 2, 2013: See bottom of review.

As an adventurous cook I'm always looking for the next unique technique that keeps me curious and will keep me on my toes learning in my kitchen. (One of my mottos is "If you are not learning, you're dying." This cook book provides so many new techniques that I found my heart racing as I turned each page.

As a conscientious and concerned member of this world in which we live, and as an independent and individual thinker, I found the author's memoirs full of important thoughts and viable opinions.

While you will find peace and comfort in this book, in its writing and in its beautiful pictures, it is not a book of calming haiku poetry and a return to an older time and pace--but the grace of haikus and the respect for the old ways runs harmoniously through this book. The author's writing is creative and descriptive, both in her memoirs and her recipe instructions. The author and (what we learn of) her husband seem to be hard-working, down-to-earth people who love food, love their family and friends and try to give back to the community and the earth. There is an aura of respect in this book; such respect: For the spiritual, for the land, for the food, for life and for others.

While the author writes about her life in Japan for the past 20-some years, she is still very much an American; with her Viking stove, her collections of patinated chests, boxes and vessels, her malachite counter tops, her busy schedule, her own business (an English-orientation school), and her involvement in organizations. This unique combination of her "baggage" adds individuality and panache and flair to her recipes.

Some ingredients and tools will be hard to find, but can be ordered online. It will be great fun learning! The pages of resources alone are worth the price of this book. (I found a great resource for all kinds of varieties of bok choy and a resource for beautiful donabe pots.) But there are plenty recipes that you can become acquainted with, without a hunt for ingredients. If you are waiting for your copy of this book to be delivered, pick up some good quality soy sauce, miso, mirin, vinegar, unhulled white sesame seeds and cukes and you'll be ready to roll the day your book arrives.

The unfamiliar ingredients will seem daunting, but if you take it one ingredient at a time, you'll have no problems, because the unknown will be balanced by the simple, straightforward techniques.
If you've been thinking lately that the food you are now eating is just "too" full of flavors, (if you ever feel that way), you will find relief in this beautiful cook book.

I just received my copy of this book, but I've already read it cover-to-cover. I've already tried some of the cuke and eggplant recipes, a pickled vegetable recipe and a rice recipe. I can see this cook book will not disappoint!

Oh, boy, I want to keep writing and telling you about all the great small treasures in this book, but I realize a long review does not get read at all. Pick up a copy of this book now, then, when it starts winning awards and accolades, you can say you're already well-acquainted with it and cook from it often!

UPDATE Jan. 2, 2013: Recently, I found Washoku: Recipes from the Japanese Home Kitchen at my local library and I spent about four hours browsing through it. While I think it's a great book--loaded with information and well-worth having in your cook book collection if you are at all interested in Japanese cooking--I find this Japanese Farm Food to be more down-to-earth and usable. The recipes in Japanese Farm Food are simpler; with fewer ingredients and fewer steps involved in producing memorable results.

31 of 33 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Much more than a cookbook September 10, 2012

By Cecilyd

Format:Hardcover

What Peter Mayle gave us from his year of living in Provence, Nancy Singleton Hachisu has given us the incredible gift of her twenty five years lived in the Japanese countryside. This book is so much more than a cookbook. Nancy, an American from Palo Alto, California, raised three sons with her husband Tadaaki in his home village in rural Japan. This book is the story of that life told through food - the day to day harvesting and creation of beautiful meals prepared simply from ingredients harvested that day. As I turned the pages of the book and read phrases or gazed at the evocative images, I wanted to step into the scene and live the experience. Nancy, an accomplished chef before she moved to Japan, has managed to transcend cultures and bring us the simple, real food that used to be part of living. JFF is a masterpiece to be treasured!

35 of 40 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Delivers everything the previews promised September 5, 2012

By M. J. Smith VINE™ VOICE

Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase

This is the ultimate down to earth, realistic slow food movement cookbook - memoir - photographic volume that belongs in every foodies' library. The recipes are simple - the Japanese equivalent to the West Coast rancher food of my own youth. The main difference? the old-time skills are rural Japanese not the old country i.e. Finland. Living in Seattle, most of the Japanese ingredients including fresh vegetables. For some cooks, shiso leaves or yuzu juice may present a bit of a problem but everything is finable.

Although the stories behind the recipes are fascinating, the recipes also present another side of Japanese cooking with a bit of world-wide fusion tucked into the very traditional. Examples:
1. a sesame-miso vinaigrette with rice vinegar and rapeseed oil.
2. a charcoal-grilled yellowtail collar with soy sauce and daikon
3. new potato tempura
4. stir-fried snap peas with miso, red pepper, ginger
5. red bean rice
...
All in all this is a tribute to the universality of fresh food, simply prepared.

If this appeals to you, also consider Shiro Kashiba: Wit, Wisdom and Recipes from a Sushi Pioneer by Shiro Kashiba and Ann Norton (sorry product link is not working correctly).