Product Description

This book helps to learn how to prepare more than 70 authentic Japanese recipes for fish and seafood, meat, rice, tofu, sushi, noodles, soup, vegetables, desserts and drinks. With suggestions for complete meals, a glossary of ingredients and their western alternatives, and lists of suppliers, Harumi demystifies modern Japanese cooking. Illustrated throughout with superb photographs of dishes, preparation steps, tableware and presentation ideas, Harumi's Japanese Cooking gives a popular insight into the way meals are eaten in Japan today.Drawing on traditional elements, the recipes embrace simplicity and elegance, combining authentic Japanese cuisine with contemporary tastes. With more than 100 recipes for fish and seafood, meat, rice, tofu, sushi, noodles, soup, vegetables, desserts and drinks, "Harumi's Japanese Cooking" provides a broad selection of mouthwatering recipes. Helpfully, she also suggests which recipes combine well for meals. A glossary of ingredients and their western alternatives, plus useful lists of suppliers complete the book, making it today's most comprehensive introduction to modern Japanese food.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #8587 in Books
• Published on: 2008-05-15
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 160 pages

About the Author
Harumi Kurihara is the best-known cookery writer in Japan, with a public profile similar to that of Delia Smith in the UK. Her cooking and lifestyle books and magazines and media-friendly charisma have brought her phenomenonal success, based on a down-to-earth, unpretentious approach to stylish living and eating. She has made the traditional Japanese values of elegance and simplicity relevant and accessible to millions. Kurihara's powerful popular appeal has seen her sell more than 13 million cookery books and magazines - her glossy quarterly Suteki Recipe (Beautiful Recipes), which features her own recipes, home decoration ideas and lifestyle tips, is always a bestseller. Her Yutori no kukan (A space for comfortable living) chain of shops sells her own Harumi K. brand of simple and stylish household items like tableware, homewear and gardening tools; each has a cafe where customers can sample her recipes. Thirteen Harumi K. concessions have been opened in department stores all over Japan.

Customer Reviews

Simple Japanese Cooking
Being a novice of Japanese cooking I decided that I would need a book that would offer simple recipes and background to Japanese cuisine. So I plumped for this book and was extremely happy when I first opened the book and skimmed through the pages.

Harumi Kurihara is very much like our own Delia; her food is basic to the Japanese person like a roast dinner is to us. But to us Japanese cooking is very new and exciting so we need an author that can give us the basics of Japanese cooking. She explains the various ingredients very well and there are some ingredients that are used throughout her dishes, these are namely mirin and dashi. I have had difficulty in finding mirin and the creation of dashi might be too difficult for basic cooks, but she sometimes give alternatives. She includes at the back of the book a list of Japanese food related shops in the UK which is helpful to a certain extent.

The book is beautifully laid out into sections which are as follows: - Appetisers, Soups and Noodles, Rice, Tofu, Seafood, Chicken and Egg, Beef and Pork, Sushi, Vegetables and Desserts. Plus you have a small section on how to use the book and a small glossary.

There are many mouth watering pictures in this book which makes it delightful to look through. With each recipe there is an accompanying picture so you have an idea of what it is supposed to look like. In my view it is always hard to try and make the food that is created look anything like the pictures in the book. But then again it is like this for most recipe books.

The Tofu section deserves a mention as she highlights seven dishes which are creative and awe inspiring for people like me who has hardly ever used Tofu. The Sushi section also deserves a mention as the pages look gorgeous, with the several different types of sushi you can make. Also the suggested toppings that you can add make this sushi section really handy.

This book is an excellent start for anybody wanting to cook Japanese food. It would have been nice to have included a section on food that is eaten at special occasions such as the Japanese New Year. But overall it is a great book that will allow you to gain access to the world of Japanese food. I urge you if you are looking for a Japanese cook book to buy this one!

beautifully presented, delicious recipes
I've thought about buying this for a while then did last week. Tried 3 recipes over the weekend - really good food, I was impressed - I'm planning to try quite a lot more. It's a very good looking book, well laid out with nice photos. Most of the ingredients are pretty easy to get hold of (well if you have access to a Japanese food store) and substitutes are almost always listed. It didn't get 5 stars because I had problems with one of the dishes (the instructions for the warm aubergine salad says to microwave the aubergine - DON'T - it makes the skin really tough) and also the fact that it doesn't give much guidance on putting menus together (e.g. it says "serves 4" but you need to combine with other dishes - but how many? what works well together?). But minor gripes aside this is an excellent book

Dissapointment
I am a big fan of Harumi Kurihara. I have her 1st and 2nd books which are written in Japanese. (They are highly recommended. BUT they are written in Japanese.) As my friends ask me to find a Japanese cooking book, I bought this. Unfortunately, this book does not give you any alternative ingridiants.....(You can imagine that you may not get the right vegitables, herbs etc.) - As she is a Japanese and has written many books, I expected her to gove an alternatives, especially when she wrote a Japanese Cooking Book in ENGLISH!!!! In addition, the recepies are quite boring, and they are not quite traditional nor new. I prefer 'Yoshoku' by Jane Lawson. I think Harumi should have translated the 2 books in English (they are sill best-sellers in Japan).