Umami Mart

  I’m always stealing ideas from my family. The latest cooking technique I stole was from my Aunt Judy (who also inspired Kayoko’s Happy Hour post last week), who specializes in making drinks and savory foods to along with it. Aunt Judy had read somewhere that a beef restaurant in Japan was trying to find […]

This was our second time teaching the Preserving and Cooking with Shio Koji class at Preserved, a retail shop focused on preserved and fermented goods, owned and operated by our good friend Elizabeth. The shop is full of tools, books, and goodies to help you pickle, brew, jam, and can to your heart’s content. Elizabeth has […]

Join us next Thursday, July 21, at Preserved (5032 Telegraph Ave.) in Oakland, where Yoko and Kayoko will be teaching a class about Preserving and Cooking with Koji. Koji, or Aspergillus oryzae, is a rice mold that’s been used in Japan to produce sake, miso, and shoyu for hundreds of years. Recently, modern chefs have discovered the wonders of shio […]

I wanted to make something simple and mouthwatering for the Canned Crab Challenge. Sarah’s Snow Crab Jeon is a tough act to follow, so I also wanted to make something that could potentially complement her recipe. So to pair with her protein-heavy dish, I decided to come up with a carb dish. I had tried […]

We are so excited to announce a class that Yoko and I will be teaching at Preserved, who has just moved into a new space! Preserved is a shop devoted to all things pickling, fermenting and yes, preserving. The owner Elizabeth Vecchiarelli and I worked together at Camino restaurant, and it was always a dream of hers to […]

Last February, I went to Jicca in Tokyo and had this seemingly unassuming dish. I’ve mainly had raw nagaimo (Chinese yam) julienned or grated in all its gooey glory. But at Jicca, it was seasoned with some serious magic. Lightly grilling this nagaimo brought out a toasty, yammy aroma while retaining its natural saku-saku crunch factor. The magical taste […]

As you may know, we recently bought a country house in the deep woods of Connecticut. We now own 9 acres of land, and my imagination goes wild with what to do — from building a chicken coop to a greenhouse, to planting yuzu and plum trees — an all Japanese vegetable garden. Unfortunately these […]

I met a wonderful couple on Instagram, who I visited on my last trip to Japan. When they cook, they always use local ingredients prepared with such care and style. I look forward to their dinner picture everyday and I often leave comments telling them how great their meals look. One day a couple of […]

In life, I’m all about making mistakes. The important thing is to just try everything! I was always the person to ask all the stupid questions in class; I’ve never had much of a fear of failure or looking dumb in public. I actually just tripped and fell on a busy street with full-on Farmer’s […]

Koji is a rice mold that has been used in Japan to ferment sake and shoyu for hundreds of years. Recently, shio-koji (salt koji) has been discovered as a miracle cooking ingredient that pumps up the umami factor to any ol’ dish. We’ve talked a lot about shio-koji on Umami Mart in the last year – it’s all […]