The Japanese Larder: Bringing Japanese Ingredients into Your Everyday Cooking by Luiz HaraMy rating: 5 of 5 stars
Disclaimer: I received a free ecopy via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.
If you're looking for a cookbook focused on traditional Japanese recipes/cuisine, then keep looking. Instead, this book takes a focus on essential ingredients that are traditionally found in Japanese cuisine. Nearly everyone is familiar with some, while others might be hard to find outside Japan. Hara takes those ingredients an shows how they can be used in all sorts of dishes. Sure there are some traditional recipes (dashi stock comes to mind), but there are a whole lot that are inspired from different sorts of cuisines and dishes.
The amount of information in the book can be almost overwhelming. It acts as a primer on a lot of different ingredients and how they play a role in Japanese food. Someone starting out could be intimidated by that. To that I say take it one section at a time. The first chapter focuses on the quintessential ingredients. These are the ones that are most common and you've at least heard about before. Each subsequent section takes a different grouping of ingredients and the recipes build by incorporating these staples from one or more sections.
One thing that is great for less experienced cooks is that there are a ton of photos. I'm not sure if there is a picture for every recipe, but it certainly comes close. The food looks great too. With food it is always nice to have some sort of visual guide of how you should expect it to come out. I think this book does a great job of making these ingredients accessible.
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