The classic combination of rice and miso soup. If you’ve had a Japanese breakfast, you know there’s also a pickle or condiment: umeboshi, furikake, nukazuke, or the highly divisive natto. At my dad’s house in Tokyo, there’s usually a container of kimchee and nori no tsukudani. Nori no tsukudani is a paste you slather on […]
I make this Chinese-influenced soup when serving a batch of gyoza or fried rice. I don’t know how it’s traditionally made, but here dashi is used as a base, which gives it a smooth, smokiness I like. If you have dashi on hand (I usually double a batch and freeze what I don’t use), this […]
The misoshiru (miso soup) of my youth was hearty. My grandmother made it with chunks of vegetables and sometimes white fleshed fish. She used cabbage, daikon, kabocha, yellow onion, enoki, tofu, carrots, sweet potato, and other ingredients that probably needed to be used up. I loved her misoshiru, full of flavor and sustenance—not like the […]
I don’t like cold soups, so you can trust me when I say this one is good. I spotted this recipe flipping through a Japanese food magazine and quickly skimmed the ingredients. They were accessible and simple so I went all in, totally overlooking the recipe’s title. It’s a good thing because I don’t think […]
I’m not sure if I’ve mentioned I’m allergic to soy. Which is ironic, given the title of this blog and how much Japanese food depends on it. I’m mostly sensitive to tofu and miso, so I almost never make misoshiru. It pains me because I loved my grandmother’s misoshiru growing up! Instead, I’ve been making […]
Fall has been slow to arrive in Los Angeles, but that didn’t stop me from making this milky miso soup. The salty miso, sweet kabocha, and creamy broth were nothing but a recipe for comfort. I liked it so much I might switch to making milk misoshiru in the fall and winter months, and back […]
