Food of Japan

A Japanese culinary revolution has taken place in the US: witness the explosion in the number of sushi bars, as well as the popularity of noodles, rice, and other Japanese foods, and their appearance in supermarkets everywhere. Japanese cuisine is being served up in restaurants everywhere, and much has been written about the health benefits of miso, steamed fish, and green tea. Japanese foods are finally being appreciated in the West, but most of us are still unfamiliar with how they are prepared. Shirley Booth, who lived in Japan for many years and has taught Japanese cooking to both Japanese and foreigners, gives us a wonderful, engaging history of Japanese food, its styles and traditions—from Imperial cooking to temple cooking and the food of the Yatai or street vendors. She explains every aspect of this great cuisine, the ingredients, the techniques, the essential equipment, and the importance of color and presentation. She shares over 200 recipes: soups, broths, dumplings, noodle dishes, tempura, sushi, pickles. With or without chopsticks, classics such as Broiled Eel on a Bowl of Rice (Unagi donburi or unadon) and new dishes with a twist like Chicken Breasts with Vinegar, Mustard, and Miso Dressing (Sasami no karashi zu) make Japanese cuisine very much the food of today. This wonderful cookbook invites us to sample these recipes and discover a whole new/old world of tantalizing tastes and textures.

Shirley Booth has made three films about Japanese food, most notably Japan: Food for the Spirit. She studied Zen temple cooking with the abbess of Sanko-In Temple just outside Tokyo, and now teaches at The Authentic Ethnic Cookery School in London.