This is a filling miso soup, perfect for those cold winter days. Just add a bowl of rice a vegetable side dish like boiled spinach topped with flakes of katsuobushi, and you’ll be set for the day! This is one of my favourite soups.
Tamago-jiru is a simple clear soup with gently cooked egg and threads of carrot. It is great as an accompaniment to breakfast.
Steamed Egg Custard, chawanmushi, is a smooth custard with assorted ingredients served in small ovenproof cups with lids, or ramekins. They are commonly served as part of a traditional Japanese meal, such as in kaiseki.
Soy sauce is a major ingredient in Japanese cooking, as it is in most Oriental food. Japanese soy sauce is different from Chinese soy sauce, in that the Japanese type tends to be thinner and has a different flavour. Therefore, when cooking Japanese food, always buy Japanese or Korean soy sauce.
Clams steamed in sake are a warming dish for a winter’s day.
Senbei are rice crackers, thin and crispy.
Sake, with an accent on the “e” pronounced like the e in “end”, is Japan’s most famous drink.
Tofu is soy bean curd, made from coagulated soymilk (check out our recipes to see how it’s made!).
Onigiri are balls of plain rice, with a filling and wrapped with a strip of nori. They are an addition to almost every lunchbox, since they are easy to eat with your hands.
Nori is a soft and dark brown algae, which has been dried on the same style of wooden frame used for paper. It is flattened and produced into paper thin sheets, most commonly used as the wrapping for maki sushi and onigiri, or snipped into strips and sprinkled on top of donburi and ochazuke.