Umami Mart

This monochromatic sunomono salad may look humble, but it packs a sweet and sour punch. It tastes somewhat reminiscent to the cucumber salad that comes with Thai satay skewers. Although sunomono is eaten more like a salad than pickles, it does cleanse the palate when eating something oily or spicy. Sunomono literally means vinegared (“su”) […]

Cold noodles are one of the best things about the summer. My favorite cold noodles are soba noodles. When it’s hot outside and steaming rice sounds like the last thing I want to do, I can always rely on soba noodles. But there have been more than a few times that I find that my […]

Rice has come up in conversation more than a few times since I have been back in the US. Mainly questions like “What kind of rice do you eat?” “Where do you buy your rice?” and “How does rice in the US compare to the rice in Japan?” True, nothing compares to rice in Japan […]

There are quite a few breakfast sandwich recipes in Japan that uses natto. The natto & cheese on toast sounded pretty good. Put natto and cheese on bread or an English muffin and toast it, I guess. But it is too straightforward and not my style. I wanted to push natto’s culinary limit. When I […]

The idea of a salad at many Japanese restaurants in America is some iceberg lettuce, julliened carrots and a cherry tomato (if your lucky) – topped with a creamy, sesame dressing. I can say that I am sometimes a fan of this combination, but it’s really not the kind of salad you will ever see […]

I owe much of my knife sharpening knowledge to the folks at Hida Tool & Hardware in Berkeley. So when a few people emailed me about wanting to learn more about sharpening knives, and/or purchasing a hocho, I thought it would make sense for me to bring those people with me to Hida Tool & […]

Last month, I took a relaxing trip to Pt. Reyes with one of the best books I have read this year, the Omnivore’s Dilemma by Michael Pollan (The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo was another one of my favorites this year). Although I felt like I kind of knew what Pollan’s deal was from hearsay, […]

One of the most basic things about Japanese cooking that baffled me before living in Japan was how to make dashi. I knew it was easy and that the ingredients were readily available, but I wanted to make it right. All from scratch. Here is the definitive guide to making dashi. The easiest way to […]

I was greeted with a pleasant surprise on April 19 when I opened my Gmail account. There was to be a debut release party for an organic natto product the next day at San Francisco’s Ozumo. This almost felt like when I heard the news for the release date of the latest Pavement album in […]

My obsession with rice flour continues.  As I mentioned in my last post, I think I can substitute flour with rice flour for any recipe.  It may be too subtle to taste the difference for some, but others are very distinctive, such as MOffins.  Warning: if you don’t like sticky textures, you may not like […]