Umami Mart

Takikomi Gohan (mixed rice) is one of those comfort foods that fills the kitchen with an earthy aroma. I love cooking this in the winter and coming home to the flavors of shiitake mushrooms and hijiki. I also throw in mushrooms that happen to be in season for an extra layer of flavor. Matsutake mushrooms […]

As a kid, when New Year’s rolled around, I dreaded eating ozoni, a dashi soup that includes a big ball of boiled mochi (rice cake), some fish cake and mitsuba. For the same reason that I don’t like Matzo Ball soup, I am not a big fan of ozoni because I don’t like balls of […]

There are ingredients that I always keep in stock in my kitchen; they are my daikoubutsu (favorite foods). Without them I feel like I have no fall-back option when sipping on sake or wine. Two of these ingredients are avocado and nuts. I regularly incorporate both into sauces, dips, and salads. They are really handy when […]

When I tried to come up with a recipe for the Umami Chef Matcha Challenge*, all the usual recipes were too ordinary (lots of sweets) and I wanted to make something a bit different and creative. I ended up discovering a recipe that can be used for both savory and sweet. Brilliant. When you think […]

Mayonnaise. It’s such a divisive condiment. People loooove it or haaaate it passionately. Working at Umami Mart, I overhear a lot of conversations between people when they see we carry Japanese Kewpie Mayonnaise in our conbini (Japanese for convenience store) food section. I’ve heard customers proclaim, “THIS is the BEST mayo in the world!” and others groan or say, “Ugh! Gross!” about […]

Here’s a simple twist on the very popular dish, Avocado Toast. It’s all the rage. Since I knew that yuzu kosho and avocado go so well together, I decided to incorporate yuzu kosho into my new breakfast routine. This is what I came up with: yuzu kosho avocado toast! This only takes five minutes to make […]

Many of you are well aware of my noodle addiction. I like all noodles: soba, udon, ramen, linguine, naengmyun, pho, any and all of it. Fried, boiled, in broth. Cold soba is probably the only food that I crave all of the time — and it is always the first thing I eat after being […]

I’ve made quite a few dishes using natto (fermented soy beans) in the past years — from Natto Moffin to sweet Natto Sandwich. If you like natto, it’s good with everything (almost), but if you hate natto, you wouldn’t understand any of my creations. That’s ok, I proudly HATE cilantro myself and I refuse to eat any […]

Every time I go to Japan, I am exposed to new foods, new regions and new friends. Even though I lived there for five years and visit every year, there is still so much to discover. Sometimes I think about how I want to travel to other countries and discover new cultures and lands, but […]

In my kitchen, celery is something that shows up when I make chicken soup. Other than that, I don’t really think to buy celery. The problem (until now) was that I’d use a few stalks for soup and then be stumped as to how to use the rest of it, especially since I am not […]