Japanese Recipes for the Home Cook

I love Japanese food for its simplicity and ability to meticulously compliment the natural flavor of its ingredients. You could say this is a matter of personal taste, but Japan has an undeniably high standard when it comes to food. You don’t need a Michelin guide to tell you—it’s hard to find a bad meal in Japan.

And I’m not just talking about the foods typically associated with Japan—sushi, ramen, oden, katsudon, shabu shabu, yakitori, and so on. I’m also talking about Japanese Italian pizzas and pastas, Japanese French pastries, and Japanese Indian curry. These other cuisines, filtered through the Japanese lens, have come out the other end deliciously. It gets me really excited.

Left: Pastry horn with matcha cream and adzuki at Pâtisserie Sadaharu Aoki, Tokyo Midtown Right: Yuzu soba at 暁庵 (Gyōan) in Hakone; Above: Sōmen at 貴船ひろや (Kibune Hiroya) in Kyoto

I grew up with my mom and grandma’s cooking, so I equate Japanese food with home, comfort, and culture. But as an adult, I’ll cook it occasionally, maybe once a week. Living in Los Angeles, I have access to specialty ingredients and know the basics of Japanese cooking, so the process of reflection began: given my love and passion to eat it, why don’t I cook Japanese food regularly?

Enter Humble Bean.

As a site to explore and encourage Japanese cooking, Humble Bean is a way for me to learn more about and maintain my culture’s traditions in new ways. Japanese food is accessible and I’m determined to transform the way I approach cooking on a day-to-day basis and share my discoveries along the way.