Product Description

Cooking expert and lifestyle guru Harumi Kurihara has won over the hearts of Japanese home cooks with her simple, delicious recipes. After selling millions of copies of her cookbooks, magazines, and housewares in her home country, this charismatic former housewife now shares her award-winning kitchen secrets with Americans for the first time.

These elegant, effortless recipes reflect Harumi's down-to-earth approach to Japanese cooking. Simply written and featuring everyday ingredients, recipes include Pan-Fried Noodles with Pork and Bok Choy, Warm Eggplant Salad, Japanese Pepper Steak, Seafood Miso Soup, and Harumi's popular Carrot and Tuna Salad, along with a chapter on simple ways to make delectable sushi at home.

Demystifying Japanese cooking and celebrating freshness, seasonality, and simplicity, this delightful book introduces Americans to one of the food world's brightest stars, and invites us to cook with her, one gracious dish at a time.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #78504 in Books
• Published on: 2006-04-04
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 160 pages

From Publishers Weekly
The publisher calls Kurihara "Japan's Martha Stewart" because of her numerous bestselling cookbooks, her lifestyle magazine and line of kitchenware, but judging by the overall simplicity of these recipes—and that Kurihara is "not interested in decorating [her] food for the sake of it"—that comparison is questionable. The recipes in this volume are divided into basic categories: appetizers, soups and noodles, rice, tofu, seafood, chicken and egg, beef and pork, sushi, vegetables, and desserts and drinks. They range from extremely accessible, such as Beef on Rice and Chicken with Red and Green Peppers, to more intimidating, such as Shrimp and Squid Tempura. But even the more involved entries are doable thanks to Kurihara's encouraging and straightforward (if not always elegant, thanks to an occasionally awkward translation) prose. She covers traditional Japanese favorites like Okonomiyaki Hiroshima fu (Japanese-Style Savory Pancake) and more contemporary takes with international influences, like Tofu with Basil and Gorgonzola Dressing, which she describes as "a rather Italian way to serve up tofu." Throughout, the emphasis on eating mindfully, varying ingredients and keeping portions small (especially for dessert) means that this is a healthful cookbook that doesn't try too hard to be one. Photos. (Apr. 4)
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About the Author
Harumi Kurihara is Japan's most popular cooking and lifestyle personality. She has sold more than seven million copies of her cookbooks, as well as more than five million copies of her cooking magazine. A nationwide sensation in her home country, she also appears on Japanese television and runs housewares shops and restaurants. This is her first book to be published in the U.S.

Customer Reviews

Great Introduction to Healthy Eating
Japanese food is famous for being great to look at and great for your body. But it is not easy to make it using traditional methods. Kurihara's book removes that problem. She makes it easy to create both the traditional family meals and some unusual concoctions of her own.

This book does not cover the kinds of foods you will be able to buy at Japanese restaurants but rather the kinds of foods that Japanese eat at home. Her recipes make it easy to make them in your home. She has tested these recipes in Europe and has found some interesting substitutes for materials not easily found outside of Japan.

If you like Japanese cooking and would like to try to make it at home, this is the best introduction. Once you get accostomed to her cooking style, you can then move on to the more difficult methods of Tsuji and Suzuki. But you will find yourself returning to this book regularly because your family will keep requesting her foods.

Delicious, creative Japanese-influenced recipes
Just so you know, the recipes in this wonderful cookbook are largely Japanese-Western fusion, not traditional Japanese. We enjoyed the delicious mentaiko spaghetti this afternoon (very easy to make) and the tofu Gorgonzola pesto salad. The combinations of flavors are interesting and tasty, but if you're looking for a book of more traditional recipes, you might try Washoku.

for one of my most frequently used cookbooks:
Harumi is a bonafied cookbook star in Japan. She's published more than 12 cookbooks, some of them small and adhering to themes like Bento, Seafood, or Italian, and many of her larger ones are collections of her "favorites," recipes that are regulars in her household - both are huge bestsellers, and I own most of them. So when this english version came out, I couldn't wait to try them.

The best part is that most of these recipes are "Japanese," but they are selectively compiled to cater to the American audience. She steers clear from the so-called "weird" Japanese ingredients, like natto (fermentated soy beans), or umeboshi (really sour pickled plum). A lot of Japanese home cooking are western dishes, like casseroles and hamburgers (surprise!), but Harumi, staying true to her title, has selected authentic Japanese recipes or western dishes with a Japanese twist.

I've cooked about half of the recipes in her book, and they all came out great. The best one so far is the open-faced dumplings, and the salmon cakes, and the chicken salad. There was one questionable recipe - the shredded carrot salad - which is her staple dish (as it's published in many of her cookbooks), but I think either Harumi or her editors may have altered the original recipe (which does NOT include vinegar or mustard) to cater to the more American notion of "salad." The original version is MUCH better; less like a salad and more like a stir-fried side dish.

I can guarantee that many, if not all, of her recipes in this book will turn out great, and this is coming from a girl who was raised by her mom's Japanese cooking for a good part of her life.