Cookbook Review: André Simon awards food book reviews part one
The André Simon book awards 2023 were announced last month with Ravenous by Henry Dimbleby and Jemima Lewis taking food book title in the awards 45th year. We will be reviewing Ravenous, along with all the other shortlisted books over the coming weeks, starting today with the special commendation winner and two other excellent books on Asian cuisine.
Special Commendation: Gohan by Emiko Davies
Reviewed by Sophie Knox Richmond
Who is Emiko Davies?
Emiko Davies is an award-winning Australian-Japanese food writer, photographer and author of five cookbooks. After growing up in a diplomatic family, where she lived in several countries (including China and the USA), she now calls Italy home. Italian life inspired her first four books, which captivated readers with stories and recipes that celebrated authentic Italian cuisine. She continues to write and develop recipes and travel guides for national and international publications including Food52, Conde Nast Traveller, The Sunday Times, The Guardian, The Kitchn and delicious magazine.
What is Gohan’s USP?
Despite earning a reputation for writing exceptional Italian cookbooks, Davies harboured a deep yearning to write a Japanese cookbook that allowed her to share her heritage. She realised that most people’s experience of Japanese cuisine is confined to restaurants, where complex dishes like sashimi are made by masters who have dedicated their lives to perfecting their craft. However, the food cooked by Japanese mothers and grandmothers is much quicker, easier and seasonal. Thus, Gohan hopes to change the perception of Japanese food by sharing the simple, satisfying meals that Davies grew up with - and now makes for her own children. Dishes like yakisoba, tamago no gohan (stir fried egg and rice) and soba noodle soup. As she explains: “Gohan to me means the everyday home-cooked meal. Nothing fussy. It’s quick and easy, but nourishing. A meal made with love.”
What will I love?
Davies’ evocative writing about her Japanese heritage shows how powerful food is in keeping memories alive. You almost feel you have joined her on a journey delving into her culinary history. It is fascinating to learn about lesser-known ‘everyday’ Japanese cuisine and how it is so much more than sushi, tempura and bento boxes.
The variety of recipes is impressive - with most accompanied by beautifully shot home-style photos. There is something to suit every season and taste. The ‘Winter Hotpot’ is perfect for chilly days while the ‘Cold Somen Noodles with Cucumber and Ginger’ is ideal for humid summers. It is also good to see several recipes include suggestions for ‘variations’ to help you ring the changes. Prepare to be inspired.
Is it good bedtime reading?
Most definitely. This isn’t just a recipe book to cook from, it is one to curl up and read from cover to cover. You will become immersed in Davies’ moving tributes to her family and food memories with pages discussing everything from ‘Making Tofu in the Mountains of Nagano’ to the ‘The Perfect Bowl of Japanese Rice’. Each recipe also features deeply personal introductions which feature childhood memories and additional tips passed down from mother (or grandmother) to daughter.
Will I have trouble finding the ingredients?
Gohan is all about home-cooking and Davies makes a concerted effort to encourage readers to use ingredients they already have to hand. Having said that, there are still a fair few ingredients that will take a little effort to get hold of - such as plum vinegar, dried bonito flakes, kirimochi (dried mochi blocks), natto and Japanese taro to name just a few. Once you familiarise yourself with suppliers, and/or become more confident with substitutions, it shouldn’t be too much of a problem.
How easy are the recipes to follow?
One of Gohan’s main aims is to dispel the myth that Japanese food is complicated. There are dishes which require time, skill and effort but there are plenty that can be ready in under 15 minutes. Those that require a certain level of technique, like the ‘Filled Rice Balls’, are accompanied by helpful step-by-step photos. Some ingredient lists are a little vague (e.g. the ‘Fried Rice’ suggests ‘a handful of green beans’), but then that is the nature of the style of cooking that is central to the book (especially with a recipe designed to use up leftovers). Overall, the recipe instructions are clear, easy to follow and, thanks to the introductions and tips, feel like Davies is guiding you through each step.
Stand-out recipes?
The ‘Curry Croquettes’ are dangerously addictive and the ‘Fried Pork Cutlet with Miso Sauce’ is packed full of flavour. The ‘Seafood Rice Gratin’ is wonderfully rich and creamy, the epitome of comfort food.
How often will I cook from this book?
It depends on how much you want to eat authentic Japanese food. Recipes range from mastering the basics like how to cook rice, make panko breadcrumbs and pickled ginger, to breakfasts, mains and sweet treats so there is enough variety for you to cook regularly from the book. Classics like ‘Scrambled Eggs with Garlic Chives’, ‘Egg and Rice’ and ‘Fried Noodles’ can easily become weekly staples and recipes such as ‘Red Bean Buns’ are great for a weekend baking project.
Any negatives?
If you don’t already have a larder stocked up with staple Japanese ingredients, the initial outlay cost will be expensive. However, once you have the essentials, you will find many are used time and again. Some recipes like ‘Prawn Balls’ require specialist equipment although Davies does include alternative options like getting creative with a waffle maker.
Should I buy the book?
If you are even the slightest bit interested in learning more about Japanese cuisine, then yes. This is a beautifully written, heartfelt book full of passion and warmth, that offers readers a glimpse inside the kitchens of Japanese mothers and grandmothers. It is a privilege to have the opportunity to try nourishing, soulful recipes that have been passed down the generations.
Cuisine: Home-style Japanese
Suitable for: Keen cooks who want to deepen their knowledge on Japanese culture and cuisine.
Great for fans of: Tim Anderson
Cookbook review rating: Five stars
Click the link to buy this book: Gohan by Emiko Davies
£26, Thames & Hudson
Shortlisted books
Rintaro by Sylvan Mishima Brackett
Reviewed by Stephen Rötzsch Thomas
What’s the USP?
Rintaro joins a recent wave of cookbooks inspired specifically by Japanese izakayas, the little informal bars that serve snacks and small dishes into the night, keeping salarymen fed and watered. The best of this niche genre is currently Tim Anderson’s Your Home Izakaya, but we have a serious competitor on our hands here.
Who wrote it?
Sylvan Mishima Brackett was born in Kyoto to a local mother and an American father. The young family moved to California when Brackett was one, and he grew up to study in cookbook-writer training ground, Chez Panisse. But thirty years after leaving Japan, Brackett returned for a six-month-long exploration of Japanese kitchens. He picked up two shifts a week in a high-end kaiseki restaurant in Tokyo. But the real education came at Soba Ro, a much cosier joint north of the city, in Saitama. The restaurant’s chef/owner, Kanji Nakatani, taught Brackett as much in his restaurant as he did during their regular izakaya crawls.
Upon his return to San Francisco, Brackett went about creating a place of his own, drawing on the Japanese izakaya culture he had loved so much during his trip. Rintaro is the result of this education. It’s a Michelin-acclaimed restaurant (a phrase that instantly says ‘no stars, but a Bib Gourmand) that has won a loyal following on the west side of the bay. And now it’s a book too.
Is it good bedtime reading?
Restaurant cookbooks usually go one of two ways: straight to business, or heavy on the philosophy. There are pros and cons to each, but generally it seems to me that the recipe-centred ones could do with a little more context, and the context-laden ones could do with less pretentious rambling. Rintaro finds a healthy balance. This might be thanks to the unpretentious nature of izakayas, though I suspect co-author Jessica Battilana deserves credit too; she has a history of writing high-quality, accessible cookbooks.
And so we have chunky recipe introductions, detailed instructions for breaking down chicken and various fish, pages focussing on individual ingredients, and even a guest essay on seasonal sake by the restaurant’s ‘beverage director’.
How annoyingly vague are the recipes?
Not even remotely. Chefs, particularly relatively fancy ones, tend to be real sticklers for the details. You can’t replicate a dish night in night out without getting the small things down pat. Rintaro offers ingredients lists with metric and imperial measurements, and at times specifies what size you should be chopping your meat to down to the nearest half centimetre. If anything, these recipes are not vague enough.
Will I have trouble finding the ingredients?
Generally speaking, no. Brackett usually sticks to the sort of Japanese ingredients that are readily found in your nearest Sainsburys Local. Occasionally you’ll stumble across something that might require an Asian supermarket, but many of the base ingredients that give the most authentic flavours are offered up as separate and simple recipes themselves.
What’s the faff factor?
In keeping with Rintaro’s Bib Gourmand status, the cookbook’s faff levels are significantly lower than those you’d find in a Michelin-starred restaurant’s recipes. But, equally, they’re still a good deal faffier than more mainstream titles. Compare this to Tim Anderson’s aforementioned Your Home Izakaya, for instance. The recipes in this book are more complex - but the dishes are more impressive as a result.
How often will I cook from the book?
The relative complexity of some of the dishes present here does mean that Rintaro is perhaps better suited to weekend cookery, but there’s still enough here to tempt home cooks back regularly.
Killer recipes:
Shoyu and marmalade chicken drumettes, miso-cured black cod sunomono, corn and bechamel croquettes, simmered veal shank and tendon
Should I buy it?
If you’re looking for a quick Japanese fix for a weeknight dinner, there are better options out there. But if you want dishes that will impress friends, or replicate the flavours you’ll find at a very decent restaurant, Rintaro is for you. There’s bonus points, too, for the stunning design of the book, and Aya Mishima Brackett’s exquisite photography, which frequently elevates the humble ingredients to art; you’ve never seen chicken parts look so beautiful.
Cuisine: Japanese
Suitable for: Confident home cooks
Cookbook Review Rating: Four stars
Click the link to buy this book: Rintaro by Sylvan Mishima Brackett
£30, Hardie Grant, US
The Korean Cookbook by Junghyun Park and Jungyoon Choi
Reviewed by Stephen Rötzsch Thomas
The Korean Cookbook is written by a professional chef with an acclaimed restaurant to their name and is aimed specifically at an audience looking to bring Korean flavours into their homes. The challenge here, then, is for Junghyun Park and Jungyoon Choi to translate their professional interest in cooking into a language that is relevant for domestic kitchens.
Park is best known for Atomix, which was this year named the 8th best restaurant in the world by World’s 50 Best Restaurants. It’s one of four Korean-oriented restaurants he runs in New York, which puts him very much at the high-end of chefs-turned-writers. His co-author Choi is a research and development chef for Sempio Foods and, not that I’m claiming any foul play, Academy Vice Chair of Korea & China at World’s 50 Best Restaurants.
The Korean Cookbook is the latest entry in Phaidon’s ongoing mission to publish the definitive tome for any cuisine you care to imagine. The series always has its strengths and weaknesses, which we’ve covered over the years here. Historically, one of the series’ biggest issues has been a lack of context for the dishes presented. Here, thankfully, we see perhaps the most in-depth look at a cuisine that Phaidon have yet offered readers. Park and Choi offer an extensive forty-page introductory section exploring the concept of hansik, or Korean cuisine. There are also useful introduction to chapters on fermentation, and the different components that make up a meal in Korea. Perhaps most importantly, and frequently missing in older entries to the series, each recipe is given vital context.
The grand scope of the book means that there are over 350 recipes to choose from. Readers can be certain that any Korean dish they already know and want to recreate will be here. There are two options for the nation’s distinctive take on fried chicken, and three for bulgogi. But the joy is in discovering the unexpected, and there are plenty of exciting new ideas here for readers to explore, from Pan-Roasted Acorn Jelly to Ray with Bean Sprout Jjim and Yuja (Yuzu) Punch.
There are, as is often the case with Phaidon’s books, a large number of cases where audiences not actually based in Korea will struggle to source ingredients. Even the best stocked Asian supermarket is unlikely to provide stonecrop. Of course, this authenticity is what readers come to the series for. But sometimes it feels as though it goes too far – so much of this book is celebrating home cooking, but the authors make no effort to offer advice on substituting hard-to-find ingredients.
This is a particular shame for those looking to recreate those iconic dishes. The Korean Cookbook is all too keen to include pre-mixed cooking powders in its recipes. Park and Choi use a store-bought seasoned flour mix for both fried chicken recipes, but offer no DIY substitute. The jeon (pancake) recipes almost all call for ‘Korean pancake mix’ but, again, offer no substitute. In offering an authentic view of Korean home cooking, The Korean Cookbook is a success. In making the dishes universally accessible, less so.
But then, do people come to cookbooks that explore other cuisines expecting the author to present every dish as a simple half-hour recipe? It takes millennia to form the way a nation eats; The Korean Cookbook offers a potted history that starts in the neolithic period. It shouldn’t be a matter of rocking up at the tail end of this evolution and demanding simple translations. And, frankly, if that is what you’re looking for, we’re probably only six months out from a six-part BBC2 series and accompanying book: Rick Stein’s Korea.
For now we should relish that we are being offered a nuanced, informative take on one of the most unique and flavour-filled cuisines in the world. Time to move beyond bulgogi, and get into the real heart of Korean cooking.
Cuisine: Korean
Suitable for: Confident home cooks
Cookbook Review Rating: Four stars
Click the link to buy this book: The Korean Cookbook by Junghyun Park and Jungyoon Choi
£39.95, Phaidon Press