Umami Mart

Recently, Yoko’s sister Cindy gave everyone at Umami Mart a yuzu from her tree. I was excited because I had never used a fresh yuzu before. The yuzu fruit looks like a puckered, squat lemon, but is less brightly acidic than a lemon and tastes more like a tart mandarin orange. But not even exactly that; it […]

Feeling stuffed post-Thanksgiving? After a few days of leftovers drenched in butter, I found myself reaching for fruits of all kinds at my grocery store. It is the height of persimmon season and I’ve been eating at least one a day this month. To demarcate the period between one gluttonous holiday (Thanksgiving) and another (Christmas), I […]

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 […]

It’s yuzu season! When my sister starts giving me yuzu, I know it’s official: the holidays are here and yuzu is in abundance to help me cope. Berkeley is the queen of Meyer lemons, but I’m beginning to think it’s also one of the best places for someone to grow yuzu as friends and family are […]

The Food Republic recently declared yuzu as America’s next big THING. Well, duhhhh! Umami Mart readers, writers and shoppers have been privy to this whimsical citrus for a long while now so we’re not lifting any eyebrows at these sort of dramatic announcements. That said, I don’t use yuzu that often in my cooking. Yuzu […]

It seems like there are two types of people in this world: people with too many yuzu in their lives and people who are always in search of yuzu. Unlucky for me, I am in the latter category. But hold your tears! I met someone who has too much yuzu in her life and she […]

Yuzu citrus is one of the most important ingredients in Japanese cooking. The juice of the yuzu is prized both for its citrusy flavor and elegant. The skin is often used as a garnish for chawanmushi (steamed egg custard) or osuimono (clear dashi soup). Lately, upscale restaurants in the States love to finish off their dishes […]

It’s that time of the year, when my well-windowed apartment gets really cold and I have to bring out multiple space heaters to supplement the un-strategically placed central heater that seems to whisper lukewarm puffs of air. Luckily, my Zojirushi water boiler and warmer just arrived in the mail and I will have a steady […]

I used to be amused by the number of Kewpie mayonnaise tubes my 85 year-old grandma had stashed in her packed fridge in Tokyo. I would visit her house every few months to clean out her fridge. She would forget that she already had certain condiments and kept buying them because they would get buried […]

Admittedly, I’ve always had a much easier time coming up with cocktails than coming up with names for cocktails. But every now and then, after concocting something I consider worthy of sharing with you all (you should see the pile of cocktail recipes that didn’t make the cut), a fitting name reveals itself without too […]