Easy and Relaxed Japanese Food

I wish to share recipes that I learnt to make when I lived in Japan with my fellow Australians. I am particularly interested in recipes that are relatively easy to make and healthy. Hence I won’t be including any deep fried foods, even though they are becoming more and more popular in Japan.  My aim is to capture the spirit of Japanese food using only ingredients that are available in Australia. I figure that similar ingredients would also be available in New Zealand, Canada, USA and the UK, so I have added the British or American terms (that I am aware of) in brackets to avoid confusion eg what Australians call corn flour is corn starch in the USA.

Note too, that an Australian tablespoon is 20ml (4 teaspoons) but the rest of the world it is 15ml (3 teaspoons). Perhaps Australians are more generous?  Anyway it will not make much difference to the most recipes since items such as sugar are “to taste”.

Traditionally Japanese people did not use recipes. They were taught to cook by their mothers and things like soy sauce, salt and sugar were added to taste. When I spoke with Japanese women about their delicious cooking they’d tell me the ingredients and I’d ask, “how much?” and they’d say, “to taste”. I found this difficult until I had more idea of what it was supposed to taste like. While some foods are popular throughout Japan there are also many regional dishes specific to certain areas focusing on local ingredients.

I hope you will enjoy experiencing Japanese culture through these recipes.