Kitchen Culture Cooking Club

EXPLORE and PRACTICE Japanese cooking in your own kitchen

About 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 Tomato Salad

PROJECT Tomato Salad

TOMATOES combine well with both land and sea vegetables, and with cold noodles too, to make a variety of SALADS. This PROJECT Tomato Salad is about creating your own "house" salad featuring tomatoes. To start you off, here is a recipe for enjoying tomatoes...

Tomatoes in Japan

Tomatoes in Japan

Originating in Mesoamerica about 7,000 years ago, tomatoes arrived in Japan early in the Edo period (1603-1868) having traveled the globe and being domesticated along the way.  The first tomato plants in Japan were considered an ornamental -- they were not cultivated...

PROJECT Shaved Ice

PROJECT Shaved Ice

PROJECT Shaved Ice is about making Japanese-style kaki-gōri confections.Many people top shaved ice with fresh fruit or commercially prepared syrups. But for those who would like to make their own, here is a simple-to-make STRAWBERRY sauce. Note the recipe includes a...

Shaved Ice

Shaved Ice

Long before refrigeration was invented, people around the world went to great lengths to keep food chilled. The world’s earliest written record of such efforts is an Iranian inscription dating back to 1700 BC that describes deep pits in which snow and ice was stored...

Recent Posts & Projects

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