Japanese Cooking: A Simple Art

Rating:
Summary: Real Japanese Food
Review: We have used this book for years. Even in rural Oklahoma most of the recipies are possible with a little help from mail order and trips to Tulsa. Last year for the first time in many years I had two business trips to Japan. That was a real sanity check for this book - and yes it tells you how to do the real thing. At one lunch when we were eating cold udon noodles in a basket I looked at my Japanese hosts and said quite honestly - "you know I make this exact thing at home." They were amazed, but because of this book it is true. This should be everyone's first book on Japanese cooking.

Rating:
Summary: UNDERSTANDING Japanese food
Review: While there are certainly recipes in this book, the author does not barrage you with hundreds of impossible to replicate dishes. Instead, this is the book to read if you wish to undersdand what Japanese food is and is not, and how to bring Japanese home cooking into your own home. This is a book to read, cover to cover, not one to pick up for the purpose of grabbing a couple of recipes. Of all the cookbooks I own, this is the first international cookbook that really gave me an understanding of WHAT it was that I was preparing. And that is more important than any recipe

Rating:
Summary: UNDERSTANDING Japanese food
Review: While there are certainly recipes in this book, the authordoes not barrage you with hundreds of impossible to replicate dishes. Instead, this is the book to read if you wish to undersdand what Japanese food is and is not, and how to bring Japanese home cooking into your own home.This is a book to read, cover to cover, not one to pickup for the purpose of grabbing a couple of recipes.Of all the cookbooks I own, this is the first international cookbook that really gave me an understanding of WHAT it was that I was preparing.And that is more important than any recipe

Rating:
Summary: Excellent Manual of Japanese Techniques
Review: `Japanese Cooking A Simple Art' by prominent Japanese culinary educator Shizuo Tsuji belongs to a very select group of excellent national / regional cookbooks such as `Mastering the Art of French Cooking' by Julia Child, `Elements of Classic Italian Cuisine' by Marcella Hazan, and `From My Mexican Kitchen' by Diana Kennedy. The distinguishing feature of all four of these books plus a select few others is that they give an authoritative and relatively complete survey of provisions, equipment, principles, and techniques of their selected cuisine.

In fact, Mr. Tsuji fits this archetype even better than some of the other titles in this group, especially since Diana Kennedy, for one, has written several volumes on Mexican cuisine, so the volume I cite is only her most recent and the one most dedicated to Mexican cooking techniques rather than simply recipes and regionality. In presenting the underlying principles of Japanese cooking, Mr. Tsuji's closest western writer is Ms. Hazan.

Although the Japanese have gone much further in wrapping their cuisine and culinary techniques with the doctrines of religion, a student of Italian cuisine will tell you that the Abbruzis and the Sicilians and the Tuscans among others are no slouches when it comes to using food to celebrate life and spirituality. Mr. Tsuji tells us of the Japanese practice of formal dinners with as many as a dozen small dishes, yet the Abbruzis pull out even more stops when they call for at least thirty dishes for major celebratory banquets and the Sicilians who must have seven fishes in their Christmas Eve dinners.

Western culinary experts have even put a lot of thought into the Japanese practice of small portions. A quick read of Thomas Keller's `The French Laundry Cookbook' will show that the Japanese have no monopoly on deep reflection on cooking.

All of these comparisons are meant to show the prospective reader that as different as Japanese cuisine is from those of Western Europe and the New World, they both deal with the same act of preparing and eating food, and one can celebrate the similarities as much as one marvels at the differences.

The author very cleverly ties together East and West by recruiting the great American culinary essayist M.F. K. Fisher to write the introduction. And, to insure that Ms. Fisher knew of what she spoke, he treated her to two weeks of eating the very best food Japan had to offer.

This excellent book is divided into four sections. The first is the introduction by Ms. Fisher and the author's preface. The second section of 270 pages is comprised of expositions on the major equipment, ingredients, and techniques of Japanese cooking. The third section of 135 pages is a collection of recipes which the author says can be treated exactly like a Western cookbook where you can select a recipe according to your interest or whim and have fun with it. The fourth section is the appendices of American sources for Japanese provisions, a table of seasonal Japanese fish and substitution possibilities, and weights and measures. The color plates in the first section gives an excellent picture of Japanese provisions and plating illustrations.

In the second section, `Part One', there is a chapter on `The Japanese Meal' which lays out the composition of the formal courses of a classic meal. This is followed by an excellent 50-page guide to Japanese ingredients. This is superior to any similar presentation I have seen in either number of foodstuffs discussed or in the depth of information given about each provision. Chapters follow this on Utensils and Knives. The chapter on knives is essential to Western novices to Japanese cooking, as Japanese knife styles are very different from our familiar French archetypes. In fact, one can probably divide the culinary world into those cuisines that use the Japanese style of knife versus those who use the French arsenal. I suspect truly expert knife skills can only be learned by observing and copying an expert. In fact, Mr. Tsuji says the teaching practice of `old school' Japanese master chefs is not to describe technique to apprentices, but to simply demonstrate and have the student imitate. Very Zen. Mr. Tsuji does give line drawings of many techniques, including ways to handle the major types of Japanese kitchen knives. This alone sets him apart from most other manuals and puts him in the company of the very best such as Ms. Child and Ms. Kennedy.

Based on my very limited knowledge of Japanese cooking before reading this book, I believe the author has covered the whole spectrum of dishes, including stock making (dashi), soups, sashimi, grilling and pan frying, steaming, simmering, deep frying, salads, one pot cooking (hot pot), rice, sushi, noodles, pickling, sweets, tea, and sake.

Given the size of the book, my guess is that the author just skims the surface of the full range of recipes, although I do believe he has covered the full range of Japanese techniques. There are excellent line drawings covering the dismemberment of just about every type of fish you may imagine. My only surprise was that the wok did not even make an appearance in this book. This book is authoritative enough for me to believe that the wok is much more a completely Chinese invention than it is a pan-Asian utensil.

Very highly recommended to all students of world food.