Pizza toast (ピザトースト) is one of those things almost every Japanese household makes but nobody thinks to write down. It’s a slice of thick white bread topped like a pizza and crisped in the toaster oven — a coffee-shop classic from the 1960s that turned into everyday home food. I made this one for a…

Yakisoba — Japanese stir-fried noodles — is the ultimate quick, satisfying home meal. Springy noodles are fried with pork and a pile of vegetables and coated in a sweet, tangy, savory sauce, then finished with bonito flakes and red pickled ginger. It’s festival food, weeknight food, and leftover-vegetable food all at once. In Japan almost…

Kabocha no nimono — Japanese simmered pumpkin — is one of the coziest, most comforting side dishes on the home table. Chunks of kabocha squash are simmered in a sweet-savory broth of dashi, sugar, soy sauce, and mirin until they’re meltingly soft and glossy. It’s naturally sweet, deeply savory, and the kind of humble dish…

Salmon takikomi gohan is Japanese comfort food in a single pot — rice cooked together with salmon, mushrooms, and carrot so every grain soaks up the savory, seafood-rich broth. Once it’s done, you flake the salmon through the rice and finish with a scatter of green onion. It’s the kind of dish that makes the…

Kinpira is one of the great workhorse side dishes of the Japanese kitchen — burdock root and carrot cut into thin strips and stir-fried in a sweet-savory soy glaze. This version adds pork belly, which turns the humble side into something substantial enough to headline dinner. The pork lends richness and umami to the earthy…

These myoga and shio kombu onigiri are about as easy as Japanese cooking gets — no cooking at all beyond the rice, and they come together in about five minutes. You just fold thinly sliced myoga (Japanese ginger) and salted kelp through warm rice, then shape it into rice balls. The myoga gives them a…

When it’s too hot to think about a heavy dinner — and here in Kyushu the summer really is that hot — this cold shabu-shabu salad is what we make. Thin slices of pork are gently poached until just cooked, cooled down, and piled over a heap of crisp lettuce, cucumber, and cherry tomatoes, then…

Pork shogayaki (豚の生姜焼き) — ginger pork — is one of the true staples of the Japanese home dinner table. Thin slices of pork are pan-fried with onion and coated in a glossy sauce of soy sauce, sake, sugar, and plenty of grated ginger. It’s savory, a little sweet, warming from the ginger, and it makes…

This is the kind of tiny side dish that quietly saves dinner on a busy weeknight — green pepper and chikuwa tossed with shio kombu and sesame oil into a quick Japanese-style namul. There’s no stove involved: the peppers get soft in the microwave, and then everything gets mixed in one bowl. Start to finish…

Omurice (オムライス) is Japanese comfort food at its most affectionate — a mound of ketchup-flavored chicken fried rice wrapped in a soft, thin omelette, with a squiggle of ketchup on top. It’s a yoshoku classic, the kind of Western-influenced home cooking that every Japanese kid grows up with and every adult still craves. It looks…