I like to eat....but don't know how to cook it....
I'll be watching for tips too.
Linda C

I keep plenty of Japanese ingredients on hand, and I've tried several different methods of making Japanese pickles but have never made any that are as good as what I can buy at my local Japanese market.

I used to watch a show called Dotch Cooking, which was a contest between two competing ingredients, and the show was made in Japan but had English subtitles. For some reason, it got canceled, but I also used to watch Three Minute Cooking, which used to come on early in the morning and also had subtitles, or at least a translation of the ingredients. There were Korean cooking shows on the same channel, but they didn't have subtitles, and so that left me guessing a lot.

I make sushi frequently, but not too many other Japanese dishes, since I gave up mostly on pickles. I do make some good fresh cucumber pickles with a pickle press, but they only keep for about a week. I also frequently make tempura using a beer batter, but I haven't ventured much further than that, since it is easy enough to get Japanese food at restaurants. I do make dashi, however, for miso soup, and I also have the ingredients you listed, including ponzu sauce, but I don't use wasabi powder - I only use fresh wasabi.

I would recommend visiting an Izakaya style restaurant in your neighborhood for ideas. That was very trendy here a couple of years ago, but it might still be popular - I just haven't been in a while. I also think that it is good to combine Korean with Japanese, since Japanese can be a bit bland. There are some Korean restaurants here that I like a lot better than the Japanese ones, but they are definitely a new style of Korean. My favorite Japanese dishes to be able to make would be the pickles.

Lars

I grew up with many Japanese friends, and so was introduced to Japanese foods fairly early...at least in terms of eating them! Then I worked in a Japanese restaurant for years, and learned to cook some dishes and some of the basics.

There are two different Japanese cuisines in this country...the cuisine one is introduced to in restaurants, and the food normal Japanese folks eat in their homes. Well, actually, there is another type...the foods second and third generation Americans of Japanese descent eat in their homes!

The dishes offered in restaurants are often celebration dishes. For example, beef has always been expensive in Japan. So the dishes like beef teriyaki, served in American sized portions are not average daily fare. Many dishes we are accustomed to seeing in menus are rarely made in Japanese homes, they are foods one goes out for.

Dinner in a typical Japanese home doesn't involve peeling paper thin sheets of daikon with nothing but a very sharp knife and then slicing those sheets into "noodles" on which to display artfully arranged, sashimi "flowers" that one is meant to admire and sigh over before eating. Nor do most housewives laboriously shave blocks of bonito to obtain the material to simmer with slices of kelp...they buy Dashi-no-moto for a soup base.

Likewise, the various pickles so necessary for a Japanese table are often bought pre-made. A good housewife will make some basic tsukemono, likely salt-cured, but many of the more "exotic" types are either simply too complicated to make, or require too much space for too long a time. I've never even been able to find a recipe for the crisp, shiso flavored, bright purple eggplant slices I love so much.

I have made umeboshi, pickled plums flavored with shiso, but it is a long process and it's difficult to obtain the ume in the first place, not to mention having shiso grown in time for the short season when ume are available.

My Aunt Yoshiko was Japanese, (she preferred to be called Amy), so I grew up eating some of her cooking, although I found some of it odd, like her "fish head soup". Now, of course, I know it was simply fish stock but I didn't know anyone who made fish stock when I was small, so it was exotic.

she tried to teach me to use chopsticks, which I am still unable to do and finally just smiled and said "you no good, you use fork". She did make a kimono for me when I was small, she and my Grandmother were very close.

She taught Grandma to drink tea, and Grandma taught me, and I remember she made a crunchy kind of noodle that I'd eat by the handful all by themselves, but other than rice and a lot of fish, those crunchy noodles and tea are about all I remember. I wish I had paid more attention.

Annie

johnliu,

Your description of your own interests in Japanese cooking and your progress with it seems to match mine almost perfectly, including the book you bought. The only difference is the date would need to be changed from 1994 to 1974. That doesn't mean I have advanced further than you though. I doubt that I have. I made very slow progress initially because so little Japanese cuisine was available to me to learn from in those days. Without the experience of eating authentically prepared Japanese meals I had trouble getting the gist of it, even though I was very interested. Over the years, that has all changed. Back then, the book, which I recognized as a good one, overwhelmed me. I didn't know where to start. I now need to pull out the book again and start using it.

My first success was with vegetable maki sushi. I made it without ever having eaten it. Later, eating it at a sushi bar, I found I had done a respectable job with my home kitchen effort. I haven't made nigiri sushi or other types. I leave that to the pros.

I agree with you about the elegant simplicity of Japanese cooking. The technique I use most frequently is shio yaki (salt broiling). It is done with fatty fish such as mackerel, bluefish, salmon or trout, all of which I like. It can be done with fillets if the skin is on but works best with whole fish. It's extremely simple, yet effective.

Recently I added pork katsu to my repertoire. Katsu is similar to western style breaded and fried dishes, so it didn't grab my attention right away. I have discovered it is yummy and not difficult to make.

Japanese noodle dishes are favorites of mine and I make them using dashi-no-moto (handy stuff which is good whenever fish broth is needed) and some fresh vegetable. The cold summertime noodle dishes are very good also.

I grow some Japanese vegetables, such as daikon, edamame and a Japanese mustard, in my garden.

Rachelellen does a terrific job of putting Japanese cooking in perspective. I highly value her posts on this topic. Like Lars, my ambition is to make a good Japanese pickle. I have done a couple of the simple ones. I will keep Rachelellen's comments on this in mind.

Thanks for this thread. It will spur me to do more Japanese cooking.

Jim

John, your description exactly describes, in a much better way than I could, the essence of Japanese cookery: simplicity, clarity, balance. Unfortunately, my mastery is limited to Sumono salad. Well, mastery is too strong a term. I make it and people like it, but I'm not sure that it's all that Japanese-ish from my hands, even discounting my lack of knife skills.

I hope you intend to entertain us with further reports of your journey!

Here is a cool website I found. This is the food diary, I guess, of a self-described "Japanese housewife". She posts simple recipes for what look to me like the home cooking that rachelellen described. She's not peeling paper-thin sheets of anything, but the food looks yummy.

Here is a link that might be useful: Yasuko-san's Home Cooking

I think I have that same book. Here's my favorite video channel for Japanese home cooking: Cooking with Dog. It's very cute and the recipes are classic and traditional home fare.

To me Japanese cooking is in many aspects similar to Japanese gardening. Simplicity, quality, discipline, beauty, harmony, ------.

I think the problem for many people is not being able to get ingredients. I am lucky that there is a very good store not that far from my house.

Another thing about Japanese cooking is for good health. Japan is one of the nations with longest life span.

dcarch

There is nothing unhealthy about this one I made.

Johnliu:
Take that first step and then put in a recipe.
Hope you get going soon. I'd like to try some.
Dcarch :
I'll have to settle for a fork. I might stab myself with Chopsticks.

Jim:
I know you will be making something to get me going.

Rachel:
Come on, make something good.

Lou

John,

Thanks for the link. The menu sounds like what my Japanese friends eat--though they also seem wild for mayonnaise.

Here's a link to Dotch Cooking, tuna vs beef. On the side, you can find links to other Dotch Cooking episodes. I used to watch this show faithfully every Saturday and would tape it if I would not be at home to watch it.

Here's a link to 3 minute cooking, but unfortunately, this show did not have subtitles. You have to wait till the end to get the ingredients list.

Lars

dcarch,

That is outstanding! It's better looking than anything I've had in a restaurant. I don't think it qualifies as home cooking though and I won't be attempting to replicate it. Maybe Lou will try.

gina,

I like Cooking WIth Dog also.

BTW, many, if not all, of the original Iron Chef shows are available on YouTube. Not much in the way of instruction for the home cook there but I enjoy watching them for the entertainment.

Jim

It is kind of strange . . .
. . . not using cream, milk, butter, cheese, red and white wine - now I have to get used to swigging sake as I cook
. . . not slow-cooking rubbery collagen into glistening gelatin - I know fish flesh doesn't have much connective tissue, what about their heads and skeletons? is there a seafood analogue to my beloved pigs' feet and cow tendons?
. . . not using the oven - for baking, anyway
. . . not reducing, reducing, reducing - the liquids seem either thick or thin, rather than velvety
. . . not cooking in stages and layers - though that's perhaps because I'm making the simplest starter dishes

We're big fans of the You Tube channel cookingwithdog at our house. It helps that Francis, the narrator, is a poodle.

Two other excellent sites are justbento.com and justhungry.com.

I don't know much about cooking fish because I'm allergic, but I know my grandmother's gefilte fish had an aspic, so I was curious and looked it up. This is what it says on Wikipedia under Apics: Fish consommés usually have too little natural gelatin, so the fish stock may be double-cooked or supplemented. Since fish gelatin melts at a lower temperature than gelatins of other meats, fish aspic is more delicate and melts more readily in the mouth.

Turns out you can also buy powdered fish gelatin in Kosher markets.

I don't know how it relates to Japanese cooking, but the answer is yes, you can make it. :)

Dcarch:
Sorry, I didn't know that was food.
I thought it was a beautiful painting on the wall
but I will look closely next time.
If you believe that, I'll tell you another.

Jim :
You want me to riplicate ,
Dcarch's Photo's ??? You are kidding, right ???

I always thought you were a serious person.
Maybe I'll take you up on that.
Dcarch can critique my creation. !!!

Can't use LOL !!! Gets people confused.
Lou

Make something GOOD??? Sir, are you implying that the things I usually make are BAD??? LOL!

Disclaimer LOL (Laugh Out Loud)is meant, in this instance, to signify that the previous statements were "said" in a joking manner, referring to the poster's previous post and not intended to give offense or suggest any real offense taken by this poster from that poster's previous post.

Um. Now I've confused myself.

As far as recipes for Japanese dishes go, I'm afraid I haven't written any of them down yet. I learned mostly by watching and then doing.

Often, the names of Japanese dishes that we become familiar with don't really refer to a particular preparation. "Sunomono," simply means "things in vinegar." So, at one restaurant, the Sunomono "salad" might be comprised of cucumbers and clear noodles...at another, it might be octopus tentacles. But, whatever it is will be dressed with vinegar.

Another example, Shogayaki, which means, "cooked with ginger" is basically whatever ingredients you choose, cooked in a ginger sauce, my recipe for which is essentially equal parts of soy sauce & sake, with ginger and sugar. This is the sauce for a stir fry of some sort of meat, fish or tofu, with vegetables, and it is thickened with corn starch.

By the by, Jim, now that you've made pork katsu (tonkatsu) you might try the same thing with shrimp, fish, chicken, or oysters...all very good. For some reason, when seafood is cooked this way instead of meat, it is referred to as "furai" (fry) instead of "katsu," or at least that has been the case in restaurants I have seen it offered.

Rachael:
You know I wouldn't imply that, about your cooking.
What I really meant was to create some thing good ,
in a Japanese dish and put in the recipe.
Everyone is talking and no action.
I Judge people by their actions, not by words alone.

So come on will you, I'm getting hungry for Japanese cooking, preferably with seafood.LOL !!!

Johnliu:
Cook up something and if it turns out great, tell us how
you did it .
Put in the recipe !!!

If it doesn't, tell us about that too, so we won't do it.
Only Joking !
Lou

Rachelellen, Thanks for the language lesson! My "sunomo" salad (typo above, spelling from old Japanese friend whose recipe it is, called just "sunomo") is a cucumber with sesame salad, no noodles. Lots of vinegar. I'll call it Japanese cucumber salad instead for clarity.