Maybe not surprisingly, I’ve been a stickler for “authenticity” in food—especially Japanese food. I was born in Japan, and I’ve loved Japanese food all my life. I even wrote a book about the history of Japanese food in America, Tabemasho! Let’s Eat! I’m a foodie who takes #foodporn shots of many of my meals. I love all cuisines and seek out...
It’s been a long, sometimes lonely three years since COVID-19 arrived in the world and changed all our lives. For many of us, this holiday season may be the first since the pandemic shutdowns when we’ll be traveling to visit family once again, and dining with them. (Of course, we didn't know a historic deep freeze would disrupt nationwide travel...
I haven't really posted a lot of stuff about cooking (or even my #foodporn photos) on the blog, but I thought I'd share this video I uploaded to YouTube. I'm an "ambassador" for Syosaku-Japan, a company that sells handmade Japanese knives. I ordered my first knife, a Santoku chef's knife, back in 2019 and fell in love with their...
In her excellent book “The Fortune Cookie Chronicles: Adventures in the World of Chinese Food,” former New York Times journalist Jennifer 8 Lee explained that the fortune cookie isn’t a Chinese post-prandial delicacy at all, but rather a Japanese confection created first in Kyoto temples, adapted by Japanese Americans with little messages inside. Chinese restaurants happened to pass them out...
(NOTE: This is a sponsored post) I’m constantly learning more about Japanese knives and why and how they’re different from the typical kitchen knives we’ve grown up around. I’ve written about how I got into Japanese knives and why I bought my Santoku, the all-purpose knife that makes cooking a pleasure. I’m crazy about my Santoku. And now I have a Nakiri...
I love to cook, which is a good thing because I love to eat! I can trace my love for cooking to my childhood in Tokyo, watching my mom cook both Japanese and Western foods for our family meals. She was born in Nemuro, on the eastern-most tip of Hokkaido, the northern island of Japan. She cooked a variety of dishes...