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 Setting the Autumn Table
Setting the Table, Setting the Stage
This PROJECT is about setting the table… to set the stage for autumn’s culinary pleasures.
One simple and fun way to do this is by choosing fall-themed HASHI OKI (choptsick rests). Pictured above are a few of the options: autumnal maple leaves, chestnuts, shimeji mushrooms, persimmons, and SANMA fish.
Do you have any hashi oki ? If not, you can craft some HASHI-BUKURO (sheaths) from origami (folded paper) or other paper.
You can further enhance these hashi-bukuro by drawing images of seasonal motifs on them, or use stamps or stickers to decorate the sheaths.
Long, narrow plates are known as SANMA-ZARA (秋刀魚皿) because they are used to plate whole grilled sanma fish. Sanma-zara are also a great way to showcase clusters of food.
To learn more about SANMA fish, one of Japan’s autumnal culinary pleasures visit my Kitchen Culture blog and read my September, 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.
PROJECT Potato
Most white-fleshed potatoes generally fall into either of two categories: fluffy OR waxy. Fluffy potatoes are high-starch and tend to crumble when simmered; they are perfect for mashing, and when making korokke (croquettes). The Japanese often describe these dishes as...
TONBURI: Caviar of the Fields
The Japanese eat a number of "unusual" foods, and TONBURI (とんぶり) surely qualifies as one of them. Tonburi are the seeds of Kochia scoparia/Bassia scoparia, also known as 箒草 hōki-gusa. Branches of the mature kochia plant are crafted into hōki brooms (yes, brooms that...
PROJECT Tonburi
Tonburi, the seeds of the broom plant, are tiny and black-green in color. Because they mimic the appearance and mouthfeel of sturgeon caviar tonburi is often referred to as hataké no kyabia (“caviar of the field”). Akita prefecture in the Tohoku produces most of...
PROJECT Takikomi Gohan
Takikomi-style rice dishes are cooked in a flavorful stock extracted from the ingredient being featured (in this case, MUSHROOMS). Takikomi rice is truly a delicious way to enjoy seasonal bounty. Download a recipe for KINOKO GOHAN to get started. It does, however,...