Cool Tools: Cooking Utensils from the Japanese Kitchen

by Kate Klippensteen, Kate Klippensteen, Ori Koyama

A visually stunning book for the professional chef, the curious amateur-and anyone who appreciates the uniqueness of Japanese design and culture.

What do chefs use to grate wasabi, the eyewatering Japanese "horse radish?" To pick up the delicate cubes of tofu from boiling water? To slice sashimi? Or scoop freshly steamed rice from the pot?

Cool Tools reveals the answers to these questions and much more, as it explores the Japanese kitchen, finding a treasure trove of fascinating and practical items that are used by Japanese chefs in their daily culinary endeavors.

Japanese cuisine is flourishing among the food-conscious all over the world-as are the cookbooks featuring recipes from a wide variety of styles. Now, Cool Tools goes deep inside the kitchen, into the cupboards and the drawers, to the stove tops and wall hangers where all sorts of utensils are
stored. Here are the items being manipulated by the hands of the famous in their awe-inspiring kitchens-and the not-so-famous in their homes.

As with so many Japanese creations, the utensils are both functional and artistic. And the pieces that are the focus of this book are treated as both works of art and items of practical interest. The photography, by one of Japan's leading lensmen, celebrates the care in materials and design. The
text, by a long-time columnist on Tokyo dining and entertaining, celebrates the history, the usage, the people behind these tools, in brief, informative and entertaining entries.

Genres: Cooking, Nonfiction, Japan

111 pages, Hardcover

First published April 7, 2006

Reviews

[Andrei · Rating 4 out of 5]

I like cookbooks, especially the first part of them about kitchen tools.

This book is the best of cookbooks: cool tools only, no recipes.

[Stephen · Rating 5 out of 5]

The variety of "gadgets" offered in cooking shops attests to the typical cook's propensity to collect them. The horizon broadens for the cook who explores cuisines beyond the Euro-American world. Kate Klippensteen's book looks at the knives, strainers, pot and pans, mortars, graters, and other items "necessary" to cook like Morimoto. Her appreciation of the items she describes in enriched by her knowledge of the history of Japanese cooking and her understanding of the idea that beauty inheres in function. Even the person who will never spend six hundred dollars on a bronze hand-beaten tempura nabe (deep-frying vessel) nor a thousand dollars on an Iga-kiln-fired donabe (covered ceramic pot), will enjoy this book. It answers practical questions. Why is a wooden shamoji (rice-serving paddle) better than a plastic one for making sushi rice? Why is shark-skin oroshigane (grater) better for preparing wasabi than a metal one? Why are nakiri-bocho and usuba-bocho (vegetable knives) sharpened from only one side of the blade rather than in the symmetrical pattern common to Euro-American knives? And the photography of Yasuo Kinishi is delicious throughout.