A Kitchen Handbook: Japanese Cooking

by Emi Kazuko

This comprehensive and beautiful guide won the World Cookbook prize as the best book on an Asian subject when first published in hardback in 2001.

Genres: Cookbooks, Japanese Literature, Cooking

264 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2004

About the author

Emi Kazuko is the author of numerous food books, and was the winner of the Best in the World Asian Cuisine Book Award from the Gourmand World Cookbook Awards 2001 in Périgueux for the book Japanese Food and Cooking. Another of Emi's books, Street Café Japan has been made into a 3-part TV series transmitted in UK and Australia by the UK Style digital channel. For this, Emi acted as a programme consultant, leading the crew to various culinary centres in Japan.

Emi has also contributed articles to magazines such as Condé Nast Traveller and to bestselling books such as the Eyewitness Travel Guide to Japan. As a professional broadcaster, she has appeared on ‘Woman’s Hour’ (Radio 4) and BBC World Service current affairs programmes.

Japanese home cooking is Emi's strength and she both teaches cooking as well as prepares food for photography. She is particularly thrilled to work as a consultant on food development and leads delegations from the foreign food industry to Japan.

It is Emi's hope that Japanese cooking will one day become part of the daily Western diet. Through her professional work, she is helping to achieve this.

Reviews

[Carrie · Rating 4 out of 5]

The first section of this book gives an overview of the cookware and ingredients most used throughout Japanese cooking, with a couple of recipes scattered here and there, such as sushi rice, pickled ginger, and other ingredient + seasonings pairings. There are nice photographs of each ingredient and notes about preparation. The second section of the book includes many recipes for traditional Japanese dishes, also with great photographs of the final dish and sometimes intermediate preparation steps. I found it to be a well-organized book packed full of interesting and useful information. A lot of the recipes look delicious, and I am looking forward to trying them.

If I have one complaint about the book, it's that a good portion of the recipes use specialized ingredients, so it may not be a good book for someone without access to a well-stocked Asian grocery. Also, the font is very small, which makes the book difficult to use while cooking.