Kitchen Culture Cooking Club
EXPLORE and PRACTICE Japanese cooking in your own kitchenAbout Kitchen Culture Cooking Club
Welcome to the Kitchen Culture Cooking Club, a community space providing encouragement to those who want to EXPLORE and PRACTICE Japan’s washoku wisdom in their own kitchens.
To facilitate this, themed projects will be posted to this page periodically. Project Assignments and links to relevant reference material stored on this site will be posted to this page. Anyone, anywhere in the world, with a sincere interest in Japanese food culture is welcome to browse the contents of this page and then replicate the themed project in their own kitchen.
For those who wish to display-and-discuss their projects with like-minded people, I invite you to join the KITCHEN CULTURE Cooking Club Facebook Group (formerly the TSUDOI Project), an interactive community space.
PROJECT Tsutsumu
TSUTSUMU: Wrapping, enveloping
Wrapped foods are varied. Sometimes parchment or foil is used to enclose foods before they are cooked. Other times the wrappers are edible making pop-in-your-mouth savory packets. Below, two examples for you to try in your kitchen. Enjoy!
Miso-Slathered Salmon Steamed with Mushrooms in Foil Packets
包み蒸し
Archaeological evidence dating back at least 5,000 years shows that the early inhabitants of the Tohoku region of Japan – the Jomon peoples—fished for salmon. Millennia later salmon continues to grace Tohoku tables on a regular basis. Here, salmon is combined with a variety of mushrooms and Sendai miso, a robustly flavored, russet-colored, fermented bean paste native to the area.
The miso sauce is terrific spread on many kinds of fish, from mild-flavored flounder to more assertive oily fishes such as mackerel. Well-drained, firm tōfu can also be prepared similarly.
Piquant Miso Wrapped in Shiso Leaves
Shiso Maki しそ巻き
Japan’s Tohoku region is justly famous for its walnuts – large, meaty orbs that produce an incredibly rich, aromatic paste when roasted and crushed. The Tohoku is also known for its miso – a full-bodied red (burnished brown, really) fermented soybean paste called Sendai miso. In this dish the two local champions combine with toasted sesame to make an addictively tasty filling for herbaceous shiso leaves. Some Tohoku chefs will add a spicy spark to the sweet-and-salty miso mixture by adding a pinch of fiery shichimi tōgarashi to the filling.
Download a copy of my October 2025 newsletter about TSUTSUMU (wrapping), check it out.
Recipes and Resources
Stock (Dashi)
Dashi stock is essential to making soups and simmered or stewed dishes. Dashi is also used when making many egg dishes and all sorts of sauces, dips and dressings. Using good dashi will make a noticeable difference in the outcome of so many dishes you prepare.
Click to download recipes for (vegan) Kelp Alone Stock or Standard Sea Stock + Smoky Sea Stock
How to Cook Rice
In Japanese, the word for cooked rice, ご飯 GOHAN, is the same as the word for a meal, ご飯 GOHAN. Indeed rice is central to the meal. Download the Rice with Mixed Grains recipe.
How to Prepare Sushi Rice
Sushi dishes are made with rice that has been seasoned (with sweetened vinegar) AFTER being cooked. Download the Classic Sushi Rice recipe.
Quick Pickles
The Japanese enjoy a wide variety of tsukémono pickles, many can be assembled quickly and are ready to eat within a short time.
Download a recipe for Quick-Fix Hakusai Cabbage.
PROJECT Crunchy, Spicy Cucumbers
The catergory of foods known as tsukémono runs the gamut from sokuseki ("impatient") and asazuké (lightly pickled) to furuzuké (literally "old" or overly pickled) foods that are intensely-flavored and/or deeply fermented. There are dozens of kinds of cucumber...
PROJECT: Ika Yaki
Gingery griddle-seared squid, IKA YAKI イカ焼き is a favorite summer festival food sold thoughout Japan at yatai food stalls. Visit the Summer Festival Food: YATAI post for more information about summer festivals and the food sold at yatai stalls. This Kitchen PROJECT is...
PROJECT: Celebrating Tanabata
The Tale of TANABATA 七夕伝説 The Tale of Tanabata, which originated in China, has been told in Japan for at least 1200 years. The Japanese version tells the story of a cowherd (Kengyū in some versions, Hikoboshi in others, as the star Altair), and the Weaving Princess...
PROJECT Small Plates
MAMÉ-ZARA FunCollecting and Using Small Plates Part of the fun of collecting dishes and other tabletop accessories, is to assemble wide-ranging variations within a category. With mamé-zara, one way to do this is focus on a color scheme such as red and then collect as...