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Everyday Harumi: Simple Japanese Food for Family & Friends

11 Comments

This new work by the doyenne of Japanese cookbook authors will be welcomed by everyone who loves Japanese cuisine. "Everyday Harumi" is filled with easy-to-cook, home-style recipes that cover a wide range of meat, seafood and vegetable dishes.

The book opens with an entire chapter on cupboard essentials for making Japanese cuisine, in particular sauces that you will go back to often: ponzu, men-tsuyu, and vinegar with mirin.

Among the basic recipes are chicken "karaage," "shoga-yaki" (ginger pork) and classic vegetable dishes like tofu salad with sesame dressing. Kurihara has also adapted a few recipes so that they’re easier to prepare with ingredients found in the Western kitchen — watercress, celery and cauliflower. There’s even an udon dish with a ground-meat miso sauce that could be mistaken for pasta bolognese.

Even if you’re a collector of Japanese cookbooks, you’ll be pleasantly surprised by the new recipes to be discovered in "Everyday Harumi." Bonus: the food is presented in lovely Japanese pottery and other traditional vessels.

© Metropolis magazine

©2024 GPlusMedia Inc.


11 Comments
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I love cooking - (although after a rough day sometimes it can be a chore) and the final results are worth it! Recently my father-in-law (Japanese) commented on how wonderful my cooking was!!(made my year and day!!) My husband has his turn in the kitchen too - usually on the weekends and sometimes its the same thing but I dont mind because one day off is bliss for me!! He also says its therapeutic for him..... Marushka - Harumi`s book uses a lot of ingredients that you will be able to get in Europe. I have her first book (present) and its fab!! I will probably buy this one too!

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Marushka, there are some very nice websites from which to buy ingredients. Just an FYI.

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This is just business

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i adore cooking but not every day, then it is not about a creativity but about your duty. I would love to get a japanese cooking book, the only problem if you want to cook japanese dishes in europe - this can be very costly

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I have just always hated cooking

Sounds like no one ever showed proper cooking and the joy it can bring. I (a man) love cooking and so does my Japanese wife. Even my 5 year old daughter wants to cook on her own and she is good with simple meals.

In our circle of friends most men (and all of the foreign males) love to cook and all are extremely sophisticated in their menues. They and their women lack the mindset that cooking is is a symbol of an out dated slavery work provided by wifes for their "salary man", but a way to relieve stress by creating something with their own hands.

Maybe this kind of books with simple menues can bring some people closer to the joy of cooking.

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A previous cookbook of hers is one of the few cookbooks I have where I actually use the recipes rather than just ogle at the pics.

My tip to those entertaining family and friends: pass out some microwaved pre-packaged steamed rice and a container of natto and bellow, "Welcome to Japan!"

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Dundee cake...mmmm

Dicky - wot kira said.

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@Cleo - completely agree with you, however, my family started to object to marmite on toast for dinner after the first 50 times it was served!!!

No, in all honesty, I am not as bad as all that. I have just always hated cooking. It`s a really big problem, considering that I am supposed to be a housewife now!

The only thing I will sweat and slave for in the kitchen in Dundee cake! It is worth it! (And so am I!)

@DickMorris - yuh huh, whatever...

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kirakira -

Cook what you like. Train hubby to cook on his days off if he craves something different (or even if he don't).

When you do feel the urge to spend hours slaving and sweating, (and we do sometimes, don't we? Isn't that strange?) make double or triple quantities to stock up the freezer, so that next time the slaving and sweating can be replaced with a ching.

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Hmmm, this is a constant struggle for me. Do I strap on my pinny and do what would make my husband and MIL sssoooo happy and make him some traditional homecooked food?

Or do I strap on my symbol of women`s enslavement and spend hours slaving and sweating to produce something completely unappreciated anyway as my mothers, grandmothers and great-grandmothers have doen before me?

This is my yin and yang. My black and white. My rich and poor, good and evil.

I think I have already had way too much coffee this morning....; )!

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I LIKE this.

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