About WASHOKUcooking...

I created this site as a companion to my cookbook, Washoku: Recipes from the Japanese Home Kitchen (Ten Speed Press, 2005). Whether you have previous experience in preparing Japanese food (or not), or are skilled in the culinary arts (or not), my goal is to encourage and enable you to use my cookbook, WASHOKU, to full benefit. I am hoping you will rapidly become comfortable (and capable) applying a washoku approach (harmony and balance) to preparing your daily meals.

I invite all visitors to this site to try making the recipes featured in the current lesson in their own kitchen. Those wanting access to material from previous lessons will need to register. Your confirmation notice will include a link to WASHOKUcooking's archive. Each time a new lesson is posted to the WASHOKUworkshop page, the previous lesson will be added to the archive.

Although I am not able to correspond directly with each of you, I welcome your feedback -- especially captioned photos with a brief description of your kitchen sessions. Please download GUIDELINES for SUBMITTING WORK. To further teaching goals at this site, I may post some of the feedback I receive, adding my commentary.

About the WASHOKU book project...

Instructed, informed, and inspired by the many home cooks I had the good fortune to meet and know in my early years in Japan, WASHOKU: Recipes from the Japanese Home Kitchen is my tribute to their individual and collective culinary wisdom. I especially admired Kiyoko Andoh, the woman who became my mother-in-law, and that I affectionately called Okaasan (Mother). WASHOKU showcases many of the dishes she regularly prepared.

Like many home cooks, Okaasan practiced washoku daily, never thinking to articulate the theory behind her well-established habits. In writing WASHOKU I wanted to explain the fundamental principles that underlie Japan’s indigenous cookery to the non-Japanese speaking world.

To be sure that washoku as a set of practical guidelines could be appreciated and successfully applied by those living outside Japan and its food culture, I assembled a group of volunteers to provide me with feedback. My “advisory council” (a geographically scattered, demographically diverse group – they are named in my acknowledgments on page vi and vii) helped me test recipes, gave me information regarding availability of ingredients (in their community and on-line shops they googled), difficulty of procedure (in their kitchen, with their skill level, not mine or that of a Japanese colleague), and their food preferences (the menu pictured on the book cover are dishes that all who responded to my final questionnaire agreed had become regulars in their household).