Japanese Soul Cooking: Ramen, Tonkatsu, Tempura, and More from the Streets and Kitchens of Tokyo and Beyond [A Cookbook]

I moved to Fiji after spending five years in Japan and I sorely missed ramen, kara-age, okonomiyaki, and yoshoku (Japanized western dishes). When I saw this cookbook, I doubted I would be able to make any of them here because of my lack of access to foreign ingredients. A few shops carry Japanese soy sauce (Kikkoman), sake, and mirin, but I couldn't find most of the ingredients listed by the cookbooks I bought in Japan. This wasn't the case with "Japanese Soul Cooking": because it's written for a foreign audience, it makes do with the most basic Japanese ingredients and even teaches how to make some condiments like Tonkatsu sauce from scratch. And because one of the authors is a Japanese chef, the recipes live up to my memory of the comfort food I enjoyed in Tokyo, Osaka, Nagoya, and Hiroshima. And the best part is, they're not complicated at all: I was able to make three recipes from this book in just one week (they were all hits, by the way, especially the Nagoya Tebasaki). I'd recommend this to those who are missing authentic Japanese soul food, no matter where they are (as long as they have access to soy sauce, sake, mirin, miso, and dashi, they're all set).Here's what you can make with this cookbook: Ramen (Shoyu, Miso, and Shio Ramen, among others), Gyoza (includes recipes for homemade rayu & miso dipping sauce), Curry (without the boxed roux!), Tonkatsu (with recipes for panko & tonkatsu sauce, Furai & Korokke (plus how to make Japanese-style tartar sauce and salads), Kara-age (with a recipe for homemade ponzu), Tempura (with step-by-step pictures for making the batter), Okonomiyaki (both Osaka and Hiroshima styles, plus takoyaki and yakisoba), Donburi (nine variations of pure comfort), Soba (hot & cold dishes), Udon (wide range from classics to a modern cold version with fresh tomatoes), Itame & Chahan (stir-fries and fried rice), and Yoshoku (gratins, steaks, and pasta).Highly recommended. Hats off to the authors!

I've been wanting more authentic Japanese food as I am wanting to eat and have a similar diet to them, and this is so perfect for that! Every recipe that I have tried is so amazing! The retro curry is by far my favorite, second is the pork tonkatsu. I love how they have pictures for a lot of them and the directions are so easy to follow. I love how they give tips as to why things are cut in a certain way and the back story for each recipe. The only thing I will say is for the harder recipes that you want you do by scratch..their is no substitute options if you can't get the ingredients for the recipe. Like the ramen broth. Where I live it's so hard to find bones and stuff I can just boil. I don't have a lot of asian food markets around. But hust in general if I have to drive 30min to get one ingredient, its not that worth to me. Also I know I can probably go to a butcher and ask for bones...which is still a 20min drive...but i still find it too much trouble to do that. I did just use some chicken and beef broth and it still ended up really good. But I just wish it would say what I can substitute for close to the flavor they made. Other then that, I really love this book.

In a nutshell, if you're looking how to cook that popular dish from the local izakaya (japanese pub eatery), then this is a good place to start. Basically this cook book has all the most popular dishes you'd find at most izakaya. If you mastered everything in this book, you would actually be able to open your own izakaya as all these dishes in this book are available at my local izakaya lol. But anyways, recipes are concise, usually 1 page with a page of pictures, which is great. It might just show you the most important parts of the recipe like how to cut a fish for frying and stuff like that, which i really like. I can list all the types of food, but it's basically this, ramen (the 3 basic styles (no tonkotsu) including shoyu egg), soba, udon (including nabeyaki), gyoza (japanese potsticker), donburi (rice bowls), japanese curries (including the famous navy curry), tempura (including kakiage (fried vegies)), karaage (lightly fried chicken/fish), japanese pasta (including uni), omu rice, chahan (fried rice), tonkatsu (pork cutlet), okonomiyake (famous osaka pancake), side dishes like japanese potato salad, hamburg steak, you get the idea, it's like the most popular dishes are in this book, there are about 4-5 recipes in all these sub sections above, but cover most of the things you've seen in izakaya type restaurants. Anyways, great book to have on the shelf when inviting friends over for some home style local japanese foods that every japanese and non japanese alike know and love.

I particularly enjoyed reading about the surprising history of many of the dishes, e.g., who knew that ramen doesn’t have an ancient culinary history in Japan. Unfortunately, though, I won’t be trying many of the recipes, a large number of which call for deep frying, a no-no in my kitchen. Also, there are quite a few ingredients, especially fresh ones like the Japanese herb shiso, that are not available in smaller cities that don’t have large Asian markets. It would have been nice if the authors had suggested some more readily available substitutes.

Gift. I think this person will like it a lot.

Gave this book as a gift & they loved it!

It's one of my favorite cookbooks. I love the recipes in here. They're easy to follow. Step-by-step instructions and measurements. And they have pictures that you can compare your dish to what it should look like.

In the short time I have had this cookbook, I have already used more recipes (or used them to adapt my own, my typical technique) than any other I have purchased in the last year. I love ramen but it is not easy to find a good ramen shop in my area so a do it yourself guide like this is exactly what I was looking for!