Customer Reviews

Japanese Food and Cooking: A Timeless Cuisine: The Traditions, Techniques, Ingredients and Recipes

5 star:		(9)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Absolutely a fabulous book for those who are just starting in Japanese cooking or for those who just love gorgeous pictures. The first section of the book is comprised of a short cultural history to help you get the feel of why Japanese food is how it is-this includes a little section on regional foods and their differences-and goes from there to a short menu ideas section that divides the menus into the four seasons. After that, there is page after page of color photos and descriptive text that introduces you to not only foreign foods, but equipment, utensils, crockery and cutlery, drinking vessels, and much more. The next section is comprised of the popular ingredients used in Japanese cooking-rice/rice products, sauces, pickles, tea, tofu, mushrooms, seaweeds, herbs/spices...this section in it of itself is worth the price of the book. For those of us who cannot read Japanese, the pictures are detailed and beautiful-a boon in the Asian grocery. Lastly, the recipes are well written and tasty covering everything from sushi to soups and noodles to desserts and cakes. Inluded at the end there's also a shopping index for Japanese resources. This book is well rounded and a definate jewel to add to your collection. My only complaint would be that the recipes themselves use the Japanese names for the ingredients without a corresponding English name in parentheses. Although there is a glossary included, it's kind of a pain to keep flipping back and forth. All in all, that's such a minor part of a fab book.

I am an American with no prior experience cooking Japanese food but with this book I can now walk into an Asian super market where no one speaks English, and nothing is written in English and still be able to buy everything I need to make these great recipes! Why? Because much to my delight (and the other reviewers dismay) the first half of this book shows and explains tons of typical ingredients. EVERY ingredient has a beautiful picture so I can stroll through an asian supermakret isle and find katsuo-bushi without reading a single label. How many average Americans can do that? If you are familiar with Japanese ingredients then the first half of this book might be useless to you. If you want to learn how to cook Japanese recipes but feel intimidated because you have no idea what some ingredients are then this book is PERFECT for you!
PS katsuo-bushi is dried shaved samon flakes. :)

As a cookbook author, I often use other works for research. I am working with a Japanese chef on his book, and I felt I needed a brush-up on Japanese ingredients. This was mainly because so many new foods have been introduced to America since I first shopped for them in San Francsico when I was learning Japanese food basics in my youth. I flipped through many books, including the ones I had already, and this book blew the others out of the miso soup, hands down. The book does the reader a great service by giving two in-depth, encyclopedic sections on Japanese cooking equipment (including food culture)and ingredients. While these two sections take up half of the book, you won't be flying blind, mixing up udon and soba or the different kinds of miso. The writing is excellent, and the recipes interesting and only mildly challenging. If you are in the market for a primer on Japanese food, look no further.

And I should know because I think I have all of them!

The photos are stunning and this is one of the most extensive books on Japanese food that I've found. I will admit, Japanese cookbooks written by Japanese are really the best. The few books I have written by Western authors pale in comparison. They also tend to have fewer photos for some reason.

Alot of Japanese food and the ingredients are kind of odd. Some may not appeal to Western tastes so there are substitutions which is a great idea. There are some things the Japanese love and eat which will never translate to the Western palate such as devil's tongue jelly and natto. Eww. They taste terrible (though actually it is the texture of both that really offend!).

This book however tastes great. If you are going to own one Japanese cookbook - it should be this one.

Japanese Food and Cooking is what I would call a school book for Japanese cooking. Important ingredients from spices to fish, meat and vegetables are explained item per item. You will also learn the typical courses of a Japanese meal. Finally you will learn the preparation of meals and the required traditional cooking equipment. Presentation of the meals and the typical tableware to be used is also explained in detail. Creative people will start developing their own cooking ideas after working with this book. Less creative people will have to purchase additional Japanese recipe books but will go back to this book to find explanations for what they need to successfully purchase the ingredients and to prepare the meals they find in the recipe book. For me this is the basis for authentic Japanese cooking and I believe it must be the first book to own if you want to start to become a non-Japanese Japanese cook.

This book is informative and practical. The receipes are detailed and the ingredient lists are thorough. I used this book as a guide and the dishes came out well!

Prospective purchasers should be aware that Japanese Food and Cooking: A Timeless Cuisine: The Traditions, Techniques, Ingredients and Recipes and Sushi & Traditional Japanese Cooking: The Authentic Taste Of Japan: 150 Timeless Classics And Regional Recipes Shown In 250 Stunning Photographs are basically the same book save for a few differences. Either book would be good choice for the beginner as the recipes are well-chosen and easy to follow and the photography is generally very good, but, on the whole, 'Japanese food and cooking' is the better of the two. 'Sushi and Traditional Japanese Cooking' was published 7 years after the former and is really just a somewhat 'cut-down' version of the first. The recipes in each are the same as far as I can tell but the photographs are bigger in the earlier book, and the supplementary material, which introduces Japanese cuisine and discusses the basic ingredients and utensils in a Japanese kitchen, is much more extensive. I should also note that the title of the second publication 'Sushi and Traditional Japanese Cooking', is a bit misleading as it suggests that the book especially emphasizes Sushi as a topic when, in fact, it does not. Both books have a recipe for each of the basic types of Sushi (Nigiri, Norimaki etc) but neither covers this huge topic in any greater detail other than as a decent overview. All in all, both books are worth the money but the earlier is to be preferred and purchasing both, as I ended up doing, is just wasting money.

Comprehensive with many beautiful pictures. Deserves a place on the coffee table for everyone to see. Contains all the information you need plus many great recipies.

Half of this book contains explanations about Japanese food ingredients, food history, and tools. The other half of the book is recipes.
The recipes are good but I wish the book contained more recipes instead of Japanese food explanations. However, one advantage of it is that it explains the food names in Japanese so that you can find what you are looking for in a Japanese market.

I'll be breef. Excellent book with large picture to the point reciepts and durable cover. I love it!!!