Masterclass in Japanese Cooking

Rating:
Summary: Good Recipes, but NOT a master class lesson in sight.
Review: This book does not qualify as a `Master Class' in Japanese Cooking, because it has none of the hallmarks of a true master class. Two `master class' books by teachers would be Julia Child's `Mastering the Art of French Cooking' and Marcella Hazan's `Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking'. Two modern `master class' books by great American chefs would be Thomas Keller's very new `Bouchon' and Paul Bertolli's `Cooking By Hand'. I point out two kinds of authors for `master class books because Ms. Kazuko's book is neither.

Ms. Kazuko is not a chef. She is a Japanese journalist transplanted to the United Kingdom, where this book was written and printed. Although I am sure she is well trained in Japanese cookery, I sense she does not have the depth of knowledge as Ms. Child and Ms. Hazan. Her role in this book is that of editor or anthologist. All the true culinary writing is done by twenty (20) chefs, twelve (2) based in Japan, two (2) based in the United Kingdom, one (1) from Germany, three (3) from the United States, one (1) from Australia, and one (1) from Hong Kong. Each of these chefs has contributed one or more classic Japanese recipes in eleven different chapters. Ms. Kazuko has contributed the introduction, and chapters on the tea ceremony, the culinary regions of Japan, and `the Japanese store cupboard'. These contributions are brief and serve no better purpose than to familiarize a non-Japanese reader with some of the highlights of Japanese culinary landscape. This is a sure giveaway that the book is far more a survey for foreigners than it is a monograph on advanced techniques. But, even as an introductory text these chapters fall short in that there are virtually no pictures of a very visual tea ceremony, no helpful map for people to whom the geography of Japan is an almost complete mystery, and no pictures accompanying almost all of the descriptions of Japanese staple foods and condiments.

Most of the individual recipes appear to be in a classic Japanese style, although some have been metamorphosed by a transplantation to Hawaii or other distant lands still under the sway of Japanese culture. There are few French or Italian methods, although some classic French ingredients such as Foie gras do make an appearance. Most recipes fill a page with four sections. A brief paragraph by the editor introduces the `master chef'. A second headnote paragraph by the chef discusses some of the finer points they feel you should know about the recipe. The list of ingredients is neatly divided into sections when the recipe has separate preparations such as sauce and main preparation. Most ingredient measurements are given in both metric and English units. When only one unit is present, it is the English unit. Most unit conversions are very good, although some may be off by as much as 20%, which is no major crime, as I have seen Patricia Wells be off by that much on occasion. A few ingredient descriptions may be a bit vague, as in the specification for `1 salad lettuce'. This may be perfectly clear to a reader in London, but I think a Yank may be scratching their head trying to decide between iceberg, leaf lettuce, Romaine, of Boston lettuce. The irony is that the editor's headnote says the chef believes there are too many ambiguous words in classic Japanese recipes.

If this were a true `master class' book for non-Japanese, I would expect it to be divided more by technique such as knife skills, sushi, tempura, broths, and hibachi than by the traditional western chapters with tofu replacing polenta and nori and raman replacing semolina pasta. There is no discussion whatsoever about the style of knife unique to Japanese cuisine. This is odd, because whether or not they use the French or the Japanese styles of knife can generally define all the world's cuisines. This is especially odd since so much is made in western presentations of Japanese culinary practice about the great knife skills of the sushi chef.

The individual recipes, I believe, are generally quite good, even though the arrangement of recipes really runs counter to a book on classic techniques. The very first recipe in the first chapter on appetizers is a sashimi recipe requiring fairly advanced knife skills about which the book says nothing. The recipe refers to the katsura-muki technique for creating thinly shaved sheets of daikon and refers to another page which provides nothing so much as a picture of what these thinly shaved sheets will look like. There is nothing on how to properly hold knife or hand or vegetable, or what knife is best to use for this technique. The chapter on stocks and soups contains not a single recipe on stocks. A book on French cuisine with such a chapter would begin with no fewer than three and as many as eight different stock recipes. It is obvious from this book that the Japanese are much closer to Italian thinking about stock than to French. Just as Italian cuisine is based on a simple brodo, Japanese cooking seems to be based almost entirely on a fish stock (dashi). Rather than giving us one recipe and using it in all soup dishes, each author gives his own dashi recipe. When Jeremiah Tower did an omnibus book cooking with many major American chefs, he provided pantry recipes for all his colleagues. But then, Jeremiah Tower is a major culinary talent.

This is not a bad book but it suffers by the less than proficient writing style of editor Kazuko and her publisher's copy editing resources were a little thin in putting together this book.

If you want a true class on Japanese cooking, try `Japanese Cooking A Simple Art' by Shizuo Tsuji. I have not read the book yet, but a quick skim tells me it has everything I find missing in Ms. Kazuko's compilation.