Masterclass in Japanese Cooking

by Emi Kazuko

Imagine having the opportunity to take a course in Japanese cooking—then imagine not just one, but a score of chefs to teach you the art and techniques. Now Emi Kazuko has assembled 20 leading chefs and food experts in Masterclass in Japanese Cooking. Each cook offers you three of their favorite dishes, one of which is selected to be a step-by-step masterclass, such as Susumu Hatekeyama's Chicken Simmered with Vegetables, Kentaro's Swordfish Rice Bowl with Honey Shoyu Sauce, and Hiroshi Miura's Steamed Duck with Miso Sauce. Commentary on Japanese regions and traditions, including the tea ceremony, and an informative look inside the Japanese pantry, completes this superbly designed cookbook. Emi Kazuko is the author of five previous cookbooks, including The Book of Japanese Cooking, Japanese Food and Cooking, and Easy Sushi.

Genres: Cookbooks, Japanese Literature, Reference

192 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2002

About the author

Emi Kazuko is the author of numerous food books, and was the winner of the Best in the World Asian Cuisine Book Award from the Gourmand World Cookbook Awards 2001 in Périgueux for the book Japanese Food and Cooking. Another of Emi's books, Street Café Japan has been made into a 3-part TV series transmitted in UK and Australia by the UK Style digital channel. For this, Emi acted as a programme consultant, leading the crew to various culinary centres in Japan.

Emi has also contributed articles to magazines such as Condé Nast Traveller and to bestselling books such as the Eyewitness Travel Guide to Japan. As a professional broadcaster, she has appeared on ‘Woman’s Hour’ (Radio 4) and BBC World Service current affairs programmes.

Japanese home cooking is Emi's strength and she both teaches cooking as well as prepares food for photography. She is particularly thrilled to work as a consultant on food development and leads delegations from the foreign food industry to Japan.

It is Emi's hope that Japanese cooking will one day become part of the daily Western diet. Through her professional work, she is helping to achieve this.

Reviews

[Astrid Yrigollen · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book gives a good over view of Japanese foods and their regions. There are large colorful pictures and recipes. Do not let the "Master Class" intimidate you. There are some very basic and easy to follow recipes in here. Some that you might already be making at home. The book is divided by sections, Fish, noodles, veggies,tofu,drinks , desserts and so forth. Recipes have a littler blurb from the particular chef they are from as well. I always try to find the ones that I can easily convert to vegetarian. I was happy with the book until the end where it showed a Fugu fin drink. Fugu is Puffer fish which some silly people actually eat even though they are poisonous. Yes, I know that there are a handful of sushi chefs that are specially trained to prepare the fish and blah blah but Puffer are some of the nicest little fish to begin with. They have a cute little smile and very bold little personality. It just made me sad to see their little fins ( which are used in this drink to flavor it) sticking out of this cup. All in all if you do not want to take the time to take a class at your local community college for Japanese cooking, this book is basically equal to it except if you have questions you will have to google them instead of asking your teacher.