Actress Yuko Takeuchi releases cookbook

also a Guide to Calories please.

I am not remotely passionate about cooking but I am very passionate about eating!

Looks like she likes sweets!

Is it cooking or baking - based on the book cover, it looks like the latter.

I've heard about those women-only parties...

Did she actually have anything to do with the creation of the book, or was she just hired by the publisher to be on the cover so it would sell more copies?

Takeuchi will attend a premium women's only party next month and interview 15 women about their favorite recipes

For book 2's recipes, perhaps?

I doubt this actress wrote 102 recipes from her own personal experience.

Takeuchi said she is looking forward to the talk show event with women who are passionate about cooking

Yeah, and not bashful about giving away their recipes!

Looks like fangs coming out of her mouth.

papasmurfinjapan - think your second point nailed it right there. Doesn't matter if you're not an expert or have any relationship with the product; just stick a pretty face on the front and watch it fly off the shelves!

With all the money she will eventually make with that book, I hope she would take acting lessons. Beautiful woman but the acting bit is bad...

Every tv personality has a cook book. All these books are pretty useless when you can find all the recipes on the net.

women’s only party

I believe women's-only party would be more appropriate.

Ms　Washida; Mums should learn cooking and nutritional needs before having a child.

Wonder how it would go down if a man wrote a book and had a men only party.

Ms　Washida; Mums should learn cooking and nutritional needs before having a child.

Steve - I didnt say I couldnt cook. I just have no passion for it. Different thing.

Ms Washida; If you don't have passion can't be great, most women can't cook so well, best chefs are men. Women are brilliant bakers though.

I provide them with nutritionally balanced, interesting food. Just dont enjoy preparing and cooking it,thats all. Especially not in this heat.

I would think Nigella Lawson, Mrs Beeton and a host of others would disagree with your hilarious generalisation.

I have a passion for many other things, some of which my husband greatly appreciates.

To add: there are probably a lot of male french pastry chefs who would also disagree with you.

Ms Washida; I think there are lot of females and Fernch pastry chefs who would disagree with me, they are almost one and the same. Actually i said "most", not all, so it was not a generalisation. Of course you can find a few women who can cook well but most top ones are men because they can handle the pressure in the kitchen and multi task better than women.

Surely you can bang teh AC on while cooking, decent curry or pasta dishes can be made in less than an hour. Anyway i do most of them type of meals and never follow recipes, have looked at some for guide but because cooking is one of my most favourite hobbies for over 30 years i know what i am doing. Lucky actually because when i first was with missus she couldn't make beans on toast without burning something.

...men because they can handle the pressure in the kitchen and multi task better than women.

Another massive generalisation. You really are on a roll here!

Surely you can bang teh AC on while cooking,

I can but I prefer not to. I find when the kids are exposed to aircon/no aircon/aircon/no aircon continuously they tend to get weaker, stuffy nosed, and generally less genki. Plus it is pretty pointless anyway with a 1 year old who constantly toddles in and out of the room leaving the door wide open. Stopping every minute to shut it we would never eat!

decent curry or pasta dishes can be made in less than an hour

I am on my own with 3 kids under 8 - I barely have half an hour to cook never mind an hour. But yes, my favourite dish to cook is curry for the kids. I put in about 6 or 7 different veggies with chicken or pork, and last thing I puree the lot so they cant see the veggies. No added salt or anything. The veggies give it a sweet flavour and they wolf it down.

Another favourite is grilled salmon fillets with rice, mashed kabocha and brocolli. I put a little grated cheese onto the hot brocolli to make it melt, and squirt a dab of mayo mixed with lemon juice and a litle black pepper on the salmon and they love that too.

Waaait a minute !!! for someone who claims not to be passionate about cooking I am sounding suspiciously...passionate??! ...here! Quick - someone pass me a beer and a bag of potato chips!!!

Ms Washida; See you are getting into the cooking without thinking about it. Yeah guess it is harder with fussy eating nippers. i remember disguising vegetables and finding them hidden under left over over grub. Can get some tasty grub done with a slow cooker, good for winter stews and cassaroles.

Think that most Japanese recipe books like this are not very good. Seems to be same old stuff or the latest trends. Busy parents would love decent supermarkets cook in sauces, fresh and/or frozen. When in Britain M&S sauces were a godsend when there wasn't time to prepare a proper meal for the family.

Getting them to eat properly is a nightmare, but I very rarely follow a recipe book. I know what is healthy (studied nutrition as part of my degree) and I know what they like.

Heres a good one: get a whole chicken and roast it (they love roast chicken with homemade gravy) and then boil up the bones (dont let your Japanese spouse think it is just dirty water and chuck it away which is what happened the other Christmas!), skim off the fat and throw in a couple of stock cubes an whatever is leftover - potatoes, veggies, whatever. Add some of a bag of mixed frozen veg to bulk it up a bit and leave it to simmer very lightly for a couple of hours - you get a really good home-tasting chicken stew full of veggies and goodness that you can freeze easily.

A less long-lasting alternative is to fry the leftovers into bubble and squeak and add a tin of baked beans from home - they love that too.

OK - changed my mind - Im passionate and my cookbook will be released shortly! I really miss the UK supermarkets though - so easy to pick up all sorts of variety and eat healthily (if you choose to. Trouble with the UK is many people dont choose to!)

Dammit steve you have got me started now!! I MISS Mr Kipling!!!

My mum studied nutrition at Open University when i was little, that was how i became interested into what goes into my belly. She went overboard though, wholemeal grains only no burgers and chips and ice creams. She meant the best but didn't realise i was getting junk stuff at mates houses.

Problem with a lot of Japanese food and possibly in this book is the high salt content of foods in Japan, especially processed. Also the preservative and artificial colourings even in toddlers foods. I see neighbours kids eating Cup Noodles and stuff, ok for snack when older but not really young.

Japanese food is on the whole healthy but the options are poor, my wife used to watch Jamie oliver and Nigella here and couldn't make most recopies due to unavailable ingredients or super high prices. Woudl prefer to see a guide to easy healthy recipes for the whole family fror time pressed families.

Chicken recipe sounds great. My wife has thrown good food away before, but i think after two decades she has realised to ask me first,.

Candidate for this years best cookist?

most women can't cook so well

how do you know how well most women can cook? How many wives do you have? Have you ever tried the 102 delicious warm-hearted recipes of Yuko Takeuchi so that you claim women cannot cook?

"Looks like fangs coming out of her mouth"

That's a fork :-D

@ Steve :

my sister in law is a bit like that. Shes macrobiotic and has a 2 year old daughter, to whom she gives nothing but brown rice and mushrooms for the most part. My mother in law sneaks her ice cream and cake when my sister in law is out of the house and the poor kid goes wild with excitement!

I find Japanese food not very good if I am honest. I like it, but I dont think we have the variety here that we have in the UK, and I dont for the most part find the fresh food as fresh as home. It is very salty and whatever they say I honestly dont believe they eat as much veg as we do - well, maybe I should say as I do! The Tofu is better here though! I very much follow the "rainbow" approach to cooking with as many colours as possible, and I usually use at least 3 veggies in every dinner, plus fruit. I am nervous about chemicals and pesticides etc too here as there dont seem to be the same controls and standards although I may be totally wrong on that.

I am not interested in the cooking side, but I find the science of nutrition fascinating. I have a great book called "Foods that Harm, Foods that Heal" which is a very readable guide to basic nutrition. I use it all the time and Id be happy to post the ISBN if you are interested and the mods let me?!

My kids get their sweet-fix from yoghurts, frozen fruit juice lollies and fresh fruit mostly, although I let them have some candy a few times a week. We are all blessed with genetically good teeth so I dont worry about them too much, but I have to be careful with my elder son because I notice his behaviour gets a bit erratic if he has too much sugar!

I think most of us married to Japanese have a clash of culture story to tell regarding food at some point. My personal one is that my husband poured himself a totally UNDILUTED glass of Ribena in the UK, and got through just about half of it before finally pushing it away and declaring we Brits are disgusting for being able to drink something so sweet! I thought my Mum was going to stroke out, she was laughing so hard! Then there was the time my mother in law made marmite on toast for the kids - no butter and spread thick like chocolate spread! Now THAT was salty!!!

Another favourite if ours is "anything goes" pizza and salad. Avocado and those little sweet black grapes (or kiwi) taste amazing in a basic salad along with diced fried onions and my salmon (leftovers from when I make the salon fillets) and brocolli pizza is also quick and easy and tastes great with fresh tomato and basil.

These things for the most part take no longer than 20-30 minutes to get done.

I have two questions regarding this book:

1) Did she or can she actually cook these recipes herself, or is this just a celebrity stamping her name on a book she's probably never tried half the recipes for? (okay, the first question was two-part).

2) "Takeuchi said she is looking forward to the talk show event with women who are passionate about cooking." Why only women in this day and age? The party should be open to anyone and everyone passionate about cooking. Gender discrimination, such as that steve believes heavily in, should not exist.

steve: many men can bake as well as women, and many women can multi-task and cook as well as men. Anyone who's interested in and enjoys it should engage in it heatily. Anyone who says the kitchen is a place for one sex and not the other, or that one can do it better, should crawl out from the Stone Age and get with the times.

"Anyone who's interested in and enjoys it should engage in it heatily"

Sorry, that was meant to be 'HEARTILY', not 'heatily'.

steve: "Problem with a lot of Japanese food and possibly in this book is the high salt content of foods in Japan, especially processed."

Not necessarily so. If you buy the run of the mill stuff, which of course most do, then yes. But there are naturally fermented products you can buy with little or no additives/preservatives (soy sauce, miso, etc.). Those are the two biggies in my book, and soy sauce in particular is in so many Japanese foods. Still, there are (expensive) alternatives. BUT, if you look at the traditional Okinawan diet has far less salt so in a way you are correct, and that's one of the reasons for the longevity being so highly concentrated there. Contrast that, though, with the younger generations of Okinawans who eat a lot more Western-style junkfood (there are fast food chains there I only WISH they had here! haha) and many centenarians have seen their children die of diseases that have never been present in their family histories. My point is it's not only Japanese food, and is limited to more recent junk food or cheaper products than the traditional.

"Also the preservative and artificial colourings even in toddlers foods."

Agree with you there, especially with the colourings, although to be fair a lot of them don't see to be available any more, or have been drastically changed due to fatal allergies (red in particular, if I'm not mistaken). I had a hell of a time finding green colouring for my St. Patty's Day beer (the people next to me thought I was nuts!). The increase in preservatives/additives is scary.

"I see neighbours kids eating Cup Noodles and stuff, ok for snack when older but not really young."

The only thing I have to say about this is that kids will be kids, and while the aforementioned additives/preservatives have gotten worse, kids have always and will always opt for junkfood from the conbini or cafeteria. Hopefully at home it's a different story (in terms of access).

"Japanese food is on the whole healthy but the options are poor, my wife used to watch Jamie oliver and Nigella here and couldn't make most recopies due to unavailable ingredients or super high prices. Woudl prefer to see a guide to easy healthy recipes for the whole family fror time pressed families."

This plays into the thread under the Lifestyle (I think) section the other day asking people what foreign foods they miss. I agree that FAR too few ingredients are available in this nation outside Tokyo or specialty stores in larger cities, and they cost an arm and a leg, but I wouldn't say Japanese dishes are limited necessarily.

Make your own food and do not buy processed. No salt that way.

I doubt this actress wrote 102 recipes from her own personal experience. Because she is so slim and beautiful. Most of the person experienced cooking world have to confront their appetite and style. However, she is so slim and beauty. I think it is for her fan to share her cute picture and way of thinking. I think this is like photo album with recipes.