Practical Japanese Cooking: Easy and Elegant

In this pioneering work, Shizuo Tsuji, one of the most prominent figures in Japan's culinary world, takes all that is good about Japanese food and brings it into the home. The book presents over 100 authentic recipes (manageable even for the novice cook) for dishes ranging from familiar favorites like Miso Soup with Pork and Vegetables, Yakitori, Rice Balls, Nigiri Sushi, Soba Noodles in a Basket, Sukiyaki, and Tempura to more exotic-sounding (but actually simple to prepare) fare such as Jade Green Deep-Fried Shrimp, Yellowtail Teriyaki, Paper-Thin Sea Bass Sashimi, Sake-Simmered Lobster, Nagasaki-Style Braised Pork, Simmered Tofu Dumplings, and Turnip with Ginger-Miso Sauce. Full-color photos showcase the finished dishes and illustrate the steps involved in their preparation. Tsuji also explains many of the techniques used; and here, again, detailed photos clarify the instructions. He stresses the importance of using fresh, seasonal, and local ingredients; and the recipes call only for ingredients that are readily available in supermarkets and Asian grocery stores in the West. A section on bento boxes offers a wide variety of ideas for combining the recipes in the book into these popular, portable meal options. The Cooking Tips section includes such basic, essential recipes as dashi; and covers topics like cleaning squid, soaking dried shitake mushrooms, toasting and crumbling nori seaweed, and using bamboo rolling mats. The helpful Glossary describes the main ingredients of Japanese cooking, along with a photo of each. Friendly, accessible, and inviting, Practical Japanese Cooking will be as eye-opening and inspiring to today's home cooks as it was when it was originally published almost three decades ago.

About the Author :
Shizuo Tsuji (1935-1993) founded the prestigious Tsuji Culinary Institute in Osaka, the largest school training professional chefs in Japan. The author of over 30 books on gastronomy, travel and music, he was a leading figure in the international culinary community. His earlier work published by Kodansha in 1980, Japanese Cooking- A Simple Art, was instrumental in popularizing Japanese cuisine in the West. A second edition of Japanese Cooking came out in 2007. Koichiro Hata, head of the Japanese cookery facilities at the Tsuji Culinary Institute, appears regularly on Japanese television, and is the coauthor of numerous cooking books in Japanese. He teaches and lectures on Japanese food not only in his native land, but abroad as well, most notably in the United States and Thailand.

Review :
For the original edition "The striking photographs and creative design of this oversize cookbook stress the physical beauty of traditional Japanese cuisine. The wonderful surprise is that the book succeeds in making these artful effects accessible even to novices of Japanese-style preparation and cooking techniques. The most exotic-looking dishes, clam soup, for example, or jade green deep-fried shrimp, prove to be relatively simple to prepare. Unfamiliar cooking methods are illustrated by detailed, full-color sequence photographs. And in a lovely preface, Tsuji (Japanese Cooking: A Simple Art) president of a professional culinary school in Japan (where Hata is head chef), encourages newcomers to make Japanese cookery their own, experimenting, substituting, rearranging without fear that they will violate the spirit of a most adaptable cuisine." - Publishers Weekly "The recipes are clear and easy to follow, and the illustrations are especially delightful, truly top high-style Japanese simplicity. Messrs. Tsuji and Hata have given us the best of the old and the new." - M.F.K. Fisher