Japanese cookbooks in English by a great teacher
posted on 28 Feb 2007 by maki ::
6 comments
I don’t know how this escaped me until now, but there are actually two cookbooks available in English by one of the best teachers of traditional washoku or Japanese cooking, Tokiko Suzuki. Japanese Homestyle Cooking, published in 2000, is the more recent one, and The Essentials of Japanese Cooking is the other, published in 1995.
Tokiko Suzuki has been teaching Japanese home style cooking for decades, on the long running NHK Today’s Cooking program, private cooking classes and her numerous cookbooks and articles. I think she is in her 70s now, and bills herself self-deprecatingly as Tokiko Baaba (Grandma Tokiko). I don’t have this English book, but I do have a couple of her Japanese books. If you want to learn authentic, traditional Japanese home cooking, you absolutely cannot go wrong by following her directions. Since these books are translations, they do use authentic (and sometimes hard to get a hold of) ingredients but that’s the only minor drawback.
(For UK readers, the Japanese Homestyle Cooking book is available on Amazon UK too.)
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Just Hungry is a site about food. There are 
Cook book
I recommend also Washoku : recipes from the Japanese home kitchen by Elizabeth Andoh (Ten Speed Press, ISBN: 978-1580085199).
I agree!
I have this book; it was my first book for cooking Japanese food at home. It is excellent, with a lot of easy-to-follow pictures, some recipes for seasonal foods, and great recipes for tempura and miso soup. The food is authentic and quite simple but elegant. I also highly recommend it.
Nice to hear that the writer is a Grandma. Her cooking experience shows. :)
I was just looking at this
I was just looking at this book at Borders, and it looked so good! I was thinking it had to be authentic, so thanks for guaranteeing it! I gotta go buy it now x)
Just a thought, what do you
Just a thought, what do you think of Harumi Kurihara’s books?
I hadn’t seen either of
I hadn’t seen either of Tokiko Suzuki’s books at any of the London shops I’ve visited, s I had to order them online. The Homestyle Cooking book I purchased with Hisamatsu’s Tsukemono from the UK. The other book by Mrs Suzuki I had to get from the States, it should arrive soon now.
The Homestyle book is the Japanese cooking book I’ve always wanted! Beautifully clear, well explained, lots of tips about substitutions (and the Latin names for some of the vegetables helps me research and find possible equivalents I can buy from Asian markets) and there’s all kinds of seemingly obvious tips I was clueless about that are great to know (like reconstituting wasabi powder with grated daikon instead of water). It’s the opposite of daunting, and feels like having a true friend in the kitchen. I absolutely love it! I’m so very glad you recommended it (now I can’t wait for the other book to arrive)
I don’t think the ‘Japan’s answer to Delia Smith’ label holds true at all for her, ignoring Delia’s latest offering, Tokiko Suzuki seems a much better candidate for this tag. Mrs Suzuki really does take you through each step and makes it all seem pleasurable and simple.
oops! Wrong way round
The first English language Harumi Kurihara book is “Harumi’s Japanese Cooking”, the second is ‘Harumi’s Japanese Home Cooking’. I got them mixed up in my post above.
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