Buta kimchi (豚キムチ) is pork and kimchi stir-fried together in one pan, and it is the dish I make when it’s late, I’m hungry, and I want something on the table in ten minutes. It’s not a fancy dish. It’s a weeknight dish — the kind of thing that gets made in Japanese homes constantly,…
Goma ae (ごま和え) is the Japanese side dish that fills the small empty corner of the dinner tray. Blanched vegetables tossed in ground sesame with a little sugar and soy sauce — that’s it. It takes about eight minutes, uses three pantry ingredients, and it’s the dish I make when I look at the table…
Yaki nasu (焼きなす) is grilled eggplant, and that’s genuinely the whole recipe. You char a whole eggplant until the skin blisters and the inside collapses into something silky, peel the skin off, cut it up, and top it with bonito flakes and a splash of sauce. No oil, no seasoning while it cooks, nothing added….
Stand in front of the miso shelf at a Japanese grocery store and it’s genuinely confusing — white, red, brown, “awase,” pouches and tubs in every shade, half of them labeled only in Japanese. As a Japanese home cook, let me make it simple. Miso (味噌) is fermented soybean paste, and while there are dozens…
Yakiniku don (焼肉丼) is about as simple as a Japanese dinner gets: beef marinated in bottled yakiniku sauce, seared hard in a hot pan, and piled on a bowl of rice with a shake of sesame seeds. No dashi, no simmering, no special technique. It’s the kind of thing we make on a weeknight when…
Dashi (出汁) is the savory Japanese soup stock that sits underneath almost everything we cook — miso soup, simmered dishes, noodle broths, tamagoyaki. It’s made from just two humble ingredients: kombu (dried kelp) and katsuobushi (bonito flakes). And while I’ll be the first to admit that most Japanese families reach for a dashi packet on…
Japanese potato salad (ポテトサラダ) is a little different from the Western kind — the potatoes are partly mashed rather than left in firm chunks, the vegetables are sliced thin, and it’s bound with rich, tangy Japanese mayonnaise. It’s a staple side dish (and a deli favorite) all over Japan, and it turns up on our…
Tebasaki (手羽先) — Nagoya-style fried chicken wings — are one of the great izakaya snacks of Japan: crispy deep-fried wings brushed with a sweet-savory soy sauce and dusted with a peppery salt blend. They’re the specialty of Nagoya, made famous by chains like Sekai no Yamachan and Furaibo, and they are absolutely made for eating…
Namul (ナムル) is the Korean-style seasoned vegetable side dish that shows up constantly in Japanese homes too — especially as the colorful topping for bibimbap. This is the three-color version I make: komatsuna (Japanese mustard spinach), carrot, and bean sprouts, each blanched and tossed in a simple sesame-and-garlic seasoning. It’s bright, healthy, keeps well, and…
Bibimbap (ビビンバ) — a bowl of rice topped with seasoned vegetables, savory meat, and an egg, all mixed together before eating — is one of our favorite ways to turn a batch of namul into a proper meal. This is the easy home version I make: a quick sweet-and-savory ground meat topping, three-color namul, a…