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A review by _ash0_
Oishinbo: Japanese Cuisine: a la Carte by Tetsu Kariya
4.0
3.5 stars
I randomly picked this book while browsing through Kinokuniya bookstore just because it said Japanese cuisine. It was a great introduction to Japanese cuisine and culture. I am a vegetarian and I should have realized that their cuisine is basically raw seafood. That decreased my enjoyment as I did not enjoy reading about how to cut meat or what type of fish tastes better etc.
I think a person who loves Japanese cuisine and seafood would love this book.
This book is like a collection of short stories about a person who is obsessed with eating perfectly cooked food and his son who hates him because of this obsession. The son says that his mother died because of this obsession of his father. He made his wife cook dishes multiple times until he was satisfied with the taste. First few stories are about this fight between father and son where the son is trying to prove that food prepared in a simple fashion could be great tasting too. Last few stories were what I enjoyed the most as they talk about their cuisine and culture.
I am still not convinced how chopping meat and serving it raw could be considered “cooking”, even though the author gave many explanations for it. Indian cooking is so complex and uses so many ingredients. I liked the part about how the tea ceremony needs to get rid of vanity. I had read about Japanese tea ceremony earlier too and I like the fact that these ceremonies are so minimalistic.
There is some discussion about chopsticks and how they are made. I now want to try using a wooden chopstick sometime as the author made a point about how metal flavors everything it touches.
I am glad I read this book. I will get hold of the sequels someday.
I randomly picked this book while browsing through Kinokuniya bookstore just because it said Japanese cuisine. It was a great introduction to Japanese cuisine and culture. I am a vegetarian and I should have realized that their cuisine is basically raw seafood. That decreased my enjoyment as I did not enjoy reading about how to cut meat or what type of fish tastes better etc.
I think a person who loves Japanese cuisine and seafood would love this book.
This book is like a collection of short stories about a person who is obsessed with eating perfectly cooked food and his son who hates him because of this obsession. The son says that his mother died because of this obsession of his father. He made his wife cook dishes multiple times until he was satisfied with the taste. First few stories are about this fight between father and son where the son is trying to prove that food prepared in a simple fashion could be great tasting too. Last few stories were what I enjoyed the most as they talk about their cuisine and culture.
I am still not convinced how chopping meat and serving it raw could be considered “cooking”, even though the author gave many explanations for it. Indian cooking is so complex and uses so many ingredients. I liked the part about how the tea ceremony needs to get rid of vanity. I had read about Japanese tea ceremony earlier too and I like the fact that these ceremonies are so minimalistic.
There is some discussion about chopsticks and how they are made. I now want to try using a wooden chopstick sometime as the author made a point about how metal flavors everything it touches.
I am glad I read this book. I will get hold of the sequels someday.