Kinoko takikomi gohan (きのこの炊き込みご飯) is Japanese mushroom rice: short-grain rice cooked with mushrooms, carrot, and fried tofu in a lightly seasoned dashi broth, all in the rice cooker. Mushroom rice is the classic autumn rice dish in Japan, and once the weather cools down it’s one of the dinners we make most at home. I…

Tai no nitsuke (鯛の煮付け) is sea bream simmered in a sweet soy sauce, sake, and mirin broth until the flesh is just cooked and the skin is glazed. It’s one of the classic ways Japanese families cook fish at home — the sweet-salty sauce is made to be eaten with plain white rice, and you…

In Japan, a “chuka salad” (中華サラダ) is a Chinese-style salad — vegetables tossed in a dressing of soy sauce, vinegar, and toasted sesame oil, usually with a pinch of chicken bouillon for savoriness. It’s not really Chinese food so much as the Japanese home version of it, and it’s one of the most common small…

Shokupan (食パン) is the soft, square white loaf that Japanese families eat for breakfast — thick slices, toasted, with butter. Plenty of Japanese homes have a small bread machine on the counter for exactly this, and ours is one of them. You put the ingredients in the pan the night before or in the morning,…

Nira buta (ニラ豚) is a pork, garlic chive, and cabbage stir-fry in a glossy soy and oyster sauce, and it’s a regional dish rather than a nationwide one. It’s a specialty of Oita, here in Kyushu, where it’s served on a big plate in the middle of the table and eaten with a lot of…

Karaage (唐揚げ) is the fried chicken every Japanese family eats — soy, ginger, and garlic marinated chicken thigh, coated in potato starch and fried until the outside is crisp and craggy and the inside is still juicy. It’s in bento boxes, on izakaya menus, and on the dinner table at our house more often than…

Tai meshi is rice cooked with sea bream. In Japan it’s a celebration dish — tai sounds like the end of medetai, “joyful” — and whole grilled sea bream turns up at weddings, New Year and a baby’s first meal. But the version most families actually make is much simpler: one fillet, a piece of…

Gobo salad is the one you find in every Japanese supermarket deli case, sitting in a plastic tub between the potato salad and the hijiki. Thin strips of burdock root, carrot and cucumber in a mayonnaise dressing with a little soy sauce. It’s crunchy, a bit earthy, and it’s the side dish that makes a…

Chashu don is what happens to leftover chashu in a Japanese house. You slice it, lay it over hot rice, fry an egg, and chop some green onion over the top. It takes about four minutes once the pork exists, and in our house it is the Sunday lunch my wife asks for by name….

Boiling edamame sounds like it needs no recipe, and in a sense it doesn’t — you could drop the pods in salted water and be done. But the version served in Japanese homes and izakaya involves two small steps that most English recipes skip entirely, and they’re the reason restaurant edamame tastes seasoned all the…