An easy way to start is to just eat Japanese bento boxes for lunch.
They are cheap (under $10) and are usually very well-balanced in terms
of nutrition.

As for cooking Japanese, the most famous book on Japanese cooking is
called:

Japanese Cooking: A Simple Art by Shizuo Tsuji

It's the best book on Japanese cooking ever made. The Japanese Cooking Bible.
I have the book and it's a joy to read. It not only teaches you the
traditional Japanese cooking techniques, but also the philosophy behind
Japanese food.

It's funny that you mention Japanese cooking.

I was lucky enough to find Japanese cooking classes in my area
that are meant for native Japanese. 

The class consists of older Japanese housewives, maybe a study abroad Japanese student here and there.....and me..... No one speaks any English. Not even the cooking instructors.... Try running a google search for 料理教室　(cooking class) and see if there are any classes in your area.

After class, the teachers serve our meals, and we sit around and talk in Japanese.
Really awesome experience if you're lucky enough to find something similar in your area. The instructors pass out a copy of the recipes to each person. So now I'm SRSing all the recipes (maybe I'll make an Anki shared deck if people are interested). There are so many technical cooking words/phrases that are used very often.

Even if your Japanese sucks, just go there anyway. Turns out a lot of the people
in my class have little to no contact with English speakers. So they are very happy
to get a chance to practice English.

Also, if you go to freshverse.com and watch the "NHK General" channel under the "Analog" channels, you can catch "NHK Kyou no Ryouri", which is Monday-Thursday 11AM-11:30AM (Japan Time) and 9PM-9:30PM (Japan Time). They even have a Japan Time clock right under the video stream. There is even a magazine for the show with all the recipes.

The last 5 minutes of each show is called "NHK Kyou no Ryouri Beginners" and it's aimed at beginners.

I also bought a lot of Japanese cooking books (in Japanese). When I get home, I'll write them down and post it here.

Lastly, you can try my favorite Japanese cooking vlog on youtube:
http://www.youtube.com/user/cookingwithdog

Last edited by chamcham (2010 February 09, 1:34 pm)

For the philosophy on Japanese cooking, see http://kimonobox.com/post/en/517/ramen-girl/

For super easy onigiri, I've used these to great effect:

http://justbento.com/handbook/bento-bas … lastic-bag
http://www.justhungry.com/2007/01/onigi … _an_e.html

I second http://www.youtube.com/user/cookingwithdog

Awesome video blog. I made the オムライス for my JP wife when she was sick.

Super easy, very well laid out instructions. Better instructions than any celebrity chef or TV cooking show.

Last edited by atomiton (2010 February 09, 6:29 pm)

TheVinster wrote:

I think I want to switch my diet to Japanese food. Where should I start?

Easily done.  Get yourself a flat of eggs, industrial size tubs of ketchup and mayo, and some rice.  Ketchup is applied in heart or happy face shapes.  Mayo is put under, in, and over food.  Take any dish you like now, add eggs, mayo and ketchup and it's japanese.  it's as simple as that.

chamcham wrote:

But a few Japanese girls on the side is even better

I like a few Japanese girls on top.



Ok, no, seriously

I think before you go crazy with the Japanese food, you should at least make sure you like it first. It's just like any other cuisine, you could find food you really like and food you don't like. For one, I found out I don't like mentaiko the other week... or at least, by itself with rice. Onigiri is easy to make, but I'm always hungry after I eat it. So cook what you like, instead of looking for recipes that are just Japanese.

The other thing is that cooking something can be really time consuming, depending on how many prepackaged ingredients you want to use. For example, you want to make お好み焼き。You can make your own 出汁、grate your own 山芋、or you can buy the prepackaged flour by オタフク that has extracts of those ingredients in there. Or you can just use regular flour and water. And then you can throw all sorts of ingredients in there, from squid to shrimp to beef to eggplant. The other week, I prepared whole squid by hand and it was annoying and time consuming beyond belief. -_-;

Also, as much as I've made it, it still doesn't taste as good as it does at the DIY restaurant near me... so it's definitely a lot of work before you can actually do a Japanese diet. And more often than not, I find myself with lots of leftover ingredients for random things too, so it also takes a good mind to budget all of it so that nothing spoils.

If you work in NYC, I would suggest Fuji Catering.

They are a catering company that typically deliver
to mostly Japanese clientele working in NYC.

They have 4 different bentos everyday.
You can choose your bentos for the week.

Most bentos are $6.50.

Main website:
http://www.fuji-catering.com/

Directl link to menu:
http://www.fuji-catering.com/menu/menu_j.htm

How to order:
http://www.fuji-catering.com/oder/oder_e.html

I think it would be a great introduction to Japanese
food since the bentos change every week.

I'd rather a few Japanese girls on the bottom. Every one I've been with isn't any good on top...

A good place to start cooking Japanese food is... eating Japanese food. Find out what everyday kind of meals are in Japan. Hint: it isn't sukiyaki and okonomiyaki. Those are somewhat social meals cooked for family/friends.

Once you've got that figured out, just look at some recipes online. Japanese food is VERY easy to cook technique-wise, you just have to learn how to do aji-tsuke with stuff you might not be used to (sake, mirin, shoyu, dashi).

Examples of stuff I've cooked recently (not all is strictly Japanese, but it is the Japanese version of another Eastern Asian dish):
Kimchi chahan
nikujaga
yakisoba
omuraisu
karaagedon
mabodofu
gyuudon
subuta
mentaiko spaghetti

Last edited by Jarvik7 (2010 February 11, 6:31 am)

@daniel: That is American food imitating Japanese food. You might as well just eat a hamburger. Also, real sushi rice is a mixture of several ingredients including vinegar (but not the same vinegar that you buy at a normal store in the west), but also a number of other ingredients. You also use significantly more than a few drops of it.

Sure you can use normal vegetable vinegar instead of 純米酢, you can leave out all the other すし酢 ingredients, you can use the wrong amount of すし酢, you can use the wrong type of rice, you can use compressed filler crap(b) meat, you can use avocado, etc.. ..but you're no longer eating Japanese food. California rolls may taste good, but they (at most places I've tried them) taste nothing like sushi.

It would be like making a pizza but using sliced bread instead of dough, processed cheese slices instead of mozza, and ketchup instead of tomato paste.

-former lead chef of a popular JP restaurant

-edit-
Re: the bento suggestion. AVOID

Bentos are crap if they aren't fresh at a restaurant. It's essentially convenience store food, even if sold by a place specializing in take-out bento. You get the choice between eating cold food (ick), reheating the food (ick), or eating food that has been held at a high temperature for a long time while it was being delivered or displayed for sale (ick).

Last edited by Jarvik7 (2010 February 11, 6:30 am)

Given a choice I'd rather eat freshly cooked food instead of soggy room temperature food (I assume you mean a home-made bento I'd then bring to work or something, not something I'd eat right away) I did eat bento made by my girlfriend every day when I was in university in Osaka. It saved money but I wouldn't say it tasted better than the cafeteria (Japanese cafeterias are awesome) let alone a good restaurant or fresh home cooking.

Being introduced to new foods in a convenience-over-taste form isn't really a good idea unless you have no other choice.

Last edited by Jarvik7 (2010 February 11, 8:36 am)

vileru wrote:

Seconded. My girlfriend and every other Japanese person I know have told me that they were shocked when they first ate sushi in America because it is nothing like how it is in Japan. You can be sure that any sushi listed on a menu with the word "roll" did not originate in Japan.

When I was in Japan last December, I went to at least four different sushi restaurants. The majority of the sushi served at those restaurants were nigirizushi, in contrast to American sushi restaurants which primarily serve makimono. I wouldn't recommend eating nigirizushi at home, however, as it is much more difficult to prepare in comparison to makimono.

There are a lot of places that serve their own crazy rolls like Spider/Caterpillar/Dragon/whatever, but from experience most of these are actually Korean owned. (They can be quite good too, maybe not authentic at all, but still delicious!) But almost all sushi places will serve nigiri if they serve rolls.

I would be wary of picking any sushi place on a leisurely drive through the city though.

Nigirizushi can be "easy" to prepare at home if you buy the blocks of fish at a Japanese market, but it's kind of expensive if you want more than one kind and the quality of your sushi is very dependent on how well you cut the fish as well as selecting the fish, which takes a ton of practice. (And at very high skill levels, your ability to cook rice is tested far beyond your ability to prepare the fish correctly.) If you're fine with amateur sushi night (as I crave once-in-a-while), then it's okay, but if you love your sushi with absolutely no gristle and as silky smooth as possible, it's probably better to go to your average sushi bar and get an omakase course.

So do you recommend a cookbook then, Thora? "Japanese Cooking: A Simple Art" was suggested, and it definitely has amazing reviews, but I'll assume it focuses on as much authenticity as possible. I imagine if I shopped at the Japanese market for everything it would become incredibly expensive.