Healthy Japanese Cooking

Rating:
Summary: Great little collection vegetarians will appreciate!
Review: This book contains simple, yet elegant Japanese recipes. Apart from the use of a small bit of honey in one or two recipes, it is also vegan. You will not find any meat or dairy in this collection. What you will find are many wonderfully photographed, tempting dishes. The instructions are straightforward and the introduction explains where to find the more exotic ingredients and what are suitable substitutes if those cannot be found. It also gives suggested cutting techniques for best food presentation.

There is enough room in the margins for scribbling down a few notes, and if you use a white or silver gel pen, even more space on the solid color sections under the photos. The entrees are shown as a double page layout -- with one whole page as the color photograph and the other page as the recipe. The side dishes feature one recipe per page (two recipes per double page layout.)

There are no recipes here for maki sushi (the more familair "roll" type of sushi) -- but you will find some variants of inari (stuffed tofu pockets) and other things you an do with sushi rice. Rice or a mixture of rice and millet feature dominantly in the recipes.

Each recipe contains nutritional info for calories, fat carbohydrates, fiber and sodium. It does not have nutritional info for protein, vitamins or minerals. (I would have liked that, so this is why I only gave it four stars rather than five.)Those wanting a low-sodium collection won't be happy with the high sodium amounts, but those looking for a low-calorie cookbook may be pleased with something new to try. The recipes yield modest portions so it will be nice for a single person or couple. Those needing more can simply double the amount.

Overall, a nice little book.