When I first went to Japan in 1985 as an exchange student, I became obsessed with Japanese food. I returned loaded with basic English-language Japanese cookbooks, essentially colorful index cards with recipes and pictures. The books contained no explanation of the principles of Japanese cuisine. It was perfect for my less-than-inquisitive 16 year old mind. I just wanted recipes so I could duplicate my favorite foods at home in the US.
In college in the late '80s, I stumbled upon Shizuo Tsuji'sthen out-of-print Japanese Cooking, A Simple Art in a second hand store. Originally published by Kodansha in 1980, the book was one of the first English-language cookbooks to clearly lay out the principles of Japanese cuisine. The cookbook was truly authentic in an era defined by clunky experimentalism, haute cuisine, and fad diets.
The cookbook has 220 recipes and is organized by cooking technique, which relates back to the order in which they are served in a classical Japanese meal:
Suimono and Shirumono - Soups
Sashimi
Yakimono - Grilled & Fried Dishes
Mushimono - Steamed Dishes
Nimono - Simmered Dishes
Agemono - Deep-fried Dishes
Sunomono & Aemono - Salads
Nabemono - One pot dishes
Gohanmono - Rice dishes
...and Sushi, Menrui (noodles) and Okashi (sweets)
One of the quaint artifacts of this cookbook is a rambling and adoring introduction by MFK Fisher, whose own books of pre-blog era confessional food writing usually focused on her experience with the foods of the occidental world. A reflection of the time in which it was written, the introduction focuses on one hand on the exoticism of Japanese and 'oriental' cuisine and dining rituals (e.g. slurping noodles, introduced to the American masses in the 1985 movie Tampopo) and on the other, the intense Japanese focus on seasonality and freshness, two qualities that MFK Fisher urged Americans to adopt in their own eating. For the most part, she manages to avoid fetishizing Japanese food and culture and implores Americans to "simplify our cooking as the Japanese have done, by learning a few more of its complexities, while we still have time." I'm not quite sure how the Japanese have simplified their cooking and she doesn't really explain that in her introduction. My guess is that it is an urging for Americans to rely less on processed foods using the Japanese model of seasonality and simplicity as a model.
Alas, 28 years after she wrote her introduction, the state of the American kitchen is probably worse, not better. Fewer people of my generation seem to know how to cook and we have gotten fatter and sicker and more reliant on restaurants to prepare our meals. But I digress.
What makes this food porn-free book remarkable and still relevant 27 years after its initial publication is its extensive and detailed discussion of Japanese cuisine and the ingredients in a Japanese kitchen. Tsuji devotes nearly 100 pages explaining every element of the Japanese meal, from the 'basic formula' of the Japanese meal (ichijuu sansai - 'soup and three) to holding chopsticks (a novelty back then) to ingredients (written in both English, Japanese -Kanji or hiragana, depending on the ingredient- and the transliterated Japanese) and descriptions, and handling of each to kitchen tools, tabletop, and butchering techniques, all illustrated step-by-step.
There are some concessions to the American kitchen. Recipe yields are higher than in Japanese cookbooks written for a Japanese audience. Tsuji (or his editor) suggests substitute ingredients if the Japanese ingredient is unavailable. Cooks who are used to cookbooks arranged according to western courses may be a little befuddled by the adherence to Japanese dining principles in the presentation of recipes. I assure you, it is a minor inconvenience that will easily be forgotten as you dive into Tsuji's simple and satisfying recipes.
Elizabeth Andoh's Washoku, published by Ten Speed Press, is a modern masterpiece of Japanese cookbook writing that is as essential, perhaps more so, than Tsuji's Japanese Cooking. Published in 2005, Washoku focuses on Japanese home cooking and has sumptous food porn-style photography. The only Japanese characters in the book are those for Washoku -- literally "kitchen harmony" but used in Japanese to denote Japanese cooking - and Japanese cooking only.
The cookbook is full of tips for handling ingredients, setting your Japanese table and Japanese aesthetics. The cookbook has some -but not all - of my favorite Japanese recipes. Andoh takes ingredients like Miso and shows how adaptable it is by including many variations on miso sauces, miso soup, and miso dressings. She improvises on tradition by including many of her innovative recipes that combine her knowledge of Japanese cuisine with her intrisically American sensibilities. There are combinations and dishes I've never seen before, and they all look great. In contrast to Tsuji's adherence to Japanese tradition, Andoh, who married into a Japanese family and now runs a cooking school in Tokyo, has ordered her recipes in chapters that more closely adhere to what American cooks expect - by subject and ingredient and order in a typical American meal.
Before Andoh dives into the recipes, she discusses at length the five principles of Washoku, Japanese cuisine: Five Colors (go shiki - red, yellow, green, black and white), Five tastes (go mi - salty, sour, sweet, bitter, and spicy), Five ways (go hou - simmering, broiling, steaming etc) Five Senses (go kan - taste, sight, sound, smell, and touch) and Five Outlooks (go kan mon - mindfulness around the partaking of food). These five principles originated in China and made their way to Japan via the Korean peninsula at least 1000 years ago according to Andoh.
As Andoh explains, washoku - the philosophy, can be followed anywhere by adhering to the following guidelines that parallel contemporary thinking about sustainability and food ethics:
"Selecting ingredients at the peak of seasonal flavor, choosing locally available foods from both the land and the sea, appealing to and engaging all the senses, using a collage of color, employing a variety of food preparations, and assembling an assortment of flavors - a washoku approach to cooking gives the creative and contemplative cook an opportunity to satisfy his or her own aesthetic hunger while providing sustenance and sensory pleasure to others."
Both books are essential for cooks who are serious about Japanese cuisine. Though I have more Japanese cookbooks that I'd care to admit (uh, 17), these are the two I fall back on the most.
I don't know what the deal is with number 17, but you made me realize that I too have 17 books on Japanese cuisine, (I include one on Chanoyu/tea-cermony, which informs washoku as an almost invisible foundation.) Michael Pollan mentioned that Americans should identify an ethnic food they like and adopt it as their main fare. That's pretty much what happens when one turns to Japanese food. It's easy to adopt it completely and soon we realize that some of the Western foods we used to adore have simply disappeared (dairies, bread, processed foods, etc.), yet by including the "rule" of 5 (colors, tastes, cookings, senses), eating is satisfied way beyond a bowl of spaghetti or the ubiquitous hamburger.
Posted by: eve shebang | July 08, 2009 at 08:38 AM