Nancy Singleton Hachisu. Phaidon Press, (464p) ISBN: 9780714874746. Cooking, read 20/11/25, Hardback ★★★★☆

Japan: The Cookbook

When I initially opened this and started looking through for something to cook I felt extremely overwhelmed, mainly due to my unfamiliarity with the culture of the cuisine and how each dish works together.

It was then that I decided to wait and read the book through from front to back, not necessarily every recipe, but enough of them to get a feel for the nature of Japanese cooking. Since each section started with a small explanatory page I thought this would give me enough basis to feel more confident in actually making food from it.

Each section is a different style of cooking; noodles, rice, one-pot, steaming, etc and the explanatory note at the start really let me know where this style placed in the meal or day of a Japanese household.

This made the whole book far more approachable and understandable, dipping in and out of various recipes as I read through it to get a general flavour of what each section had to offer (and to highlight for possible tasting!). I really enjoyed approaching the book this way, it made me excited to cook from it!

We now have a list of ingredients to get, and as Nancy kept emphasising we are going to get the best quality of these that we can find, and once we’ve got some I’m going to make some recipes as tasters rather than approaching a full meal from here as I still need to get my head round some techniques and the different ingredients from our usual fare.

Once I’ve tried some recipes and seen how they work the rating may change, hopefully for the better!