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 Grandchildren are kind
PROJECT Grandchildren are Kind
Grandchildren are Kind (mago wa yasashii 孫は優しい) is an acronym that helps Japanese remember the seven food groups that help support a healthy diet.
The food groups are: beans (mame), sesame (goma and other seeds and nuts) sea vegetables (wakame), leafy greens and root vegetables (yasai), fish and seafood (sakana), shiitake and other fungi, and potatoes (imo rui).
To jump-start your project, here are some recipes for a variety of sea vegetables (wakame, hijiki, arame), bean (tofu) dishes, and (air-dried) fish.
Sea Vegetables
海藻類 kaisō rui
Visit Project Bounty of the Seas for lots of recipes using sea vegetables such as ARAMÉ, WAKAMÉ, and HIJIKI.
Chilled Tofu with Toppings
冷奴 hiya yakko, chilled blocks of tofu topped with various seasonings — the simplest maybe a dab of wasabi — and enhanced by seasoned soy concentrate (either the VEGAN version or UMAMI Essence.)
Himono (dried fish)
干物 himono
Drying fish was an old-fashioned way of extending shelf life before refrigeration was widely available. 一夜干し ichiya-boshi (literally, “overnight-dried”) are dried for hours in cool evening and night-time breezes while 天日干し tenpi-boshi (literally, “sunlight-dried”) are dried for an hour or so mid-day.
Find out more about preparing and enjoying these sorts of fish in this post from my archives.
To learn more about health-promoting MA-GO-WA-YA-SA-SHI-I menus
visit my Kitchen Culture blog and read my July, 2024 newsletter.
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.
CHAMPURU a Happy Hodgepoge
チャンプル・CHAMPURU In the local dialect CHAMPURU means “hodgepodge.” It is essentially a stir-fry; the signature dish of Okinawa. Every household will have its own version though most will include some sort of tōfu and lots of vegetables, most likely bitter melon or what...
Kampyo
干瓢・かんぴょう・KAMPYŌ What is kampyō and how is it processed into edible ribbons? Bulbous fukubé gourds are harvested in the summer and set on a spinning wheel against a sharp blade. The ribbons of gourd that get shaved off are then hung to dry in the sun or well-ventilated...
PROJECT Kampyo
干瓢・かんぴょう・KAMPYŌ This Kitchen PROJECT is about using KAMPYŌ, sun-dried fukubé gourd ribbons in YOUR kitchen. Be sure to source UNBLEACHED (無漂白 mu hyō haku) gourd ribbons so that you can use the softening liquid as a tasty stock. Gourd ribbons are used to tie up any...
PROJECT Yakumi
This Kitchen PROJECT is about making YAKUMI, fresh herb and spice mixtures, in YOUR kitchen.Use yakumi to top dishes such as chilled tōfu, fresh tomatoes or stewed eggplant. Cold noodles served with yakumi to be added to soy-based dips are a Japanese summertime...