Book

Calling all friends of the Japanese Food Report: We need your help! My pal and coauthor Tadashi Ono and I are now in the thick of writing our biggest, baddest, most exciting new cookbook yet -- and we're organizing a team of volunteer recipe testers. Want to test recipes for us?

Just in time for grilling season, Tadashi and my newest cookbook is now available -- The Japanese Grill! Run, don't walk, to your local bookstore (brick or virtual) and pick up a copy; I guarantee you'll love it.

My friend and hero Elizabeth Andoh has just published her latest cookbook, Kansha. Make sure to pick up a copy! As I paged through the book, Elizabeth's recipe for age-dashi dofu, or crispy creamy tofu, as she describes it, caught my eye (p 178). I had to cook it, and it was delicious! Here's my adaption of her recipe, for 4 servings:

Chef, educator and food journalist Yukari Sakamoto has just published a new book: Food Sake Tokyo, a fabulous guide to the city's eats. Go Yukari!

Paging through a review copy of A Cook's Journey to Japan, a charming cookbook filled with homestyle faves, I landed on the hiyashi chukka recipe, cold ramen noodles with sesame vinaigrette. Man, that looked good.

Calling all friends of the Japanese Food Report! Just in time for summer grilling (or winter grilling south of the equator), my coauthor Tadashi Ono and I are in the thick of writing an exciting new cookbook for Ten Speed Press called, appropriately enough, "The Japanese Grill." We're now organizing a team of volunteer recipe testers to evaluate our dishes, and need your help.

Okay, I'm going to out myself here -- I'm totally "gyoza otaku," or obsessed with Japanese-style fried dumplings. I'm not alone. In Japan, gyoza is the classic companion to ramen (with a frosty mug of beer finishing the picture), with bespoke versions the subject of magazine articles and television shows and endless debate online.

When you see a conga line waiting to sample some delicious hot pot it can only mean one thing: our book is out!

Hey, I could have shown you a cover shot of Japanese Kitchen Knives, but I thought you'd rather see a photo of the craftsman who actually fashioned the very knife pictured on the book's jacket!

When I worked on a story on dashi last fall, I searched mightily for all the English-language information I could find on kombu and katsuobushi (dried kelp and dried, shaved bonito), the elements that make up a classic Japanese stock. I wish "Dashi and Umami" was available when I was writing my article.