Let’s cooking!

Most people can’t cook.

Some never get near a stove except to heat up a can of soup. A lot of others never move beyond boxes of upscale hamburger helper or opening a jar of sauce over some pasta. That’s not cooking. There’s nothing wrong with it–some people don’t have (or think they don’t have) time to cook, or don’t like to, and if they’re happy with what they’re eating and how it’s being made, there’s no real reason they should cook.

But, for foreigners living in Japan, eating only prepared foods seriously limits your options. If you can’t read Japanese, you’ll have to accept either accidentally (unknowingly) eating meat products occasionally, or live on raw produce. People who’ve never been to Japan think of it as a vegetarian paradise. Vegetarians who’ve lived here know about the pork and dashi. Thus, cooking.

This site exists because there doesn’t seem to be a place to get this information elsewhere–most of it has been gathered over a few years from other foreigners, Japanese coworkers, websites, and a lot of trial and error. And because several friends and friends of friends have asked me how I managed to make X given the constraints on ingredients here (how do you make hummus without tahini?). And because I’ve been taking pictures of my meals lately and I’ve got to show them off somewhere.

Here’s what this site assumes about you:

• you’re a vegetarian, or at least interested in eating meat-free sometimes
• you understand enough Japanese to find things in the supermarket if I tell you their Japanese names

What is not assumed:

• you have access to a foreign foods store (mostly)
• you know how to do much beyond boil water
• you have a bunch of fancy kitchen equipment

You should be able to learn to cook pretty much anything on this site without much trouble. This is partly because cooking is mostly simple and easy when you’re not doing it professionally (unless you’re baking, which is not so simple or easy), and partly because most of the cooking featured on this site happens after work. There are some techniques that can be tricky the first time or two, and your poached eggs may never look pretty, but who cares? You totally can make delicious food for yourself, from scratch, with mostly cheap stuff from the neighborhood supermarket.