This cookbook was reviewed by Jana of Cherry Tea Cakes.

I’m skeptical of cookbooks written by people who appear out of their element. If you were browsing through a bookstore and found a Szechwan cookbook written by Paula Deen, you’d have to at least raise an eyebrow. Paula is a Southern chef. If you want grits and fried chicken, she’s your gal. When choosing cookbooks, I prefer to find one written by a cook with a name that posits a decent amount of credibility. If I had to choose between an Asian cookbook written between Paula Deen and Shih Ching Phuong. I’d pick the latter.

That being said, the world has changed. Just by the name you couldn’t assume Marie Maggleby is Japanese, went to high school in the Middle East, and is living in the US, yet she’s all of these and my roommate, having been cooking Japanese food with me for years. By name we shouldn’t make many assumptions anyway. The same idea goes for the author of My Japanese Table. My skepticism of a Japanese cookbook written by Debra Samuels, is an outdated notion. She’s been living and/or studying Japanese cooking longer than I’ve been alive. Her cookbook takes me along for the ride on her journey. She started out just where some are now: oblivious the multitudes of sea weed varieties.

My Japanese Table is constructed like most cookbooks: a foreword by a famous chef whose cookbooks you should own, reminiscences of the style of food and the chef’s life experiences, and then recipes organized in the order in which one would normally eat (appetizers first, dessert last). However, my favorite section of the book is one that I wish were the entire book: A Simple Guide to Japanese Ingredients. I adore my trips to the Super H Asian market near my home and discovering vegetables, roots, and fish I’ve never heard of. I try to take Marie Maggleby for assistance, but sometimes she’s busy and I’m left to fend for myself amidst thousands of products I’ve never cooked with. To this day I still can’t find the black sesame paste. Though the book has pictures and descriptions, the guide is just that: simple. I still find myself in need of The Comprehensive Guide to Japanese Ingredients.

Debra’s narration is near and dear to my heart. She tells the story of the first time she ate raw fish, her embarrassment in front of her hosts as she struggled to swallow the slippery meal. I had a similar experience with shrimp brain when I was a teenager. I appreciate the candor, but not her oversimplification. Many cookbooks start out with the premise that you already love the food, thus you bough the cookbook. This one starts out with a distrust of the food, and it shines through in the lack of adventure in the dishes. At times, the over-simplification bored me.

In terms of recipe selection, I felt like I needed twice as many options. I strolled through the book too quickly and wished the okonomiyaki recipe called for yamaimo, and the yaki niku “korean bbq” recipe had been omitted, but I understand the target audience is a beginner who probably won’t be able to find yamaimo and doesn’t eat bulgolgi on a weekly basis, or who won’t turn to the index looking for the hot pot recipes to be listed. Note: Hot Pot is not an indexed tag. For a beginner who has no desire to eat anything they haven’t heard of before, My Japanese Table is ideal. If raw fish, and the idea of using an ingredient you haven’t heard of scares you: buy it. The dishes aren’t intensive, and do not include indigenous ingredients you can’t find at your local market. This isn’t to say the recipes aren’t tasty. They are tasty, simple, and similar to basic recipes you can find on the internet.

On to the dishes:

String Beans with Crunchy Toasted Peanuts

My table enjoyed this dish immensely. If you choose to use water instead of fish stock, you should not consider the bonito flakes optional. The light fish flavor elevates the dish. The sauce was simple, quick, and tasty.

Sliced Pork with Ginger

This recipe caused us some trouble and even arguments over the execution. The sauce is wonderful, however I read the instructions as a “pork and ginger stir fry” and cooked it as I would a stir fry. This resulted in a very tough and overcooked pork. This is not the recipes fault, however, it should be noted that in step two, the pork should not be fully cooked. Not even close. If I were doing this again, I would skip step two and put the raw pork straight into the sauce to cook for three minutes. We are also still debating is there should be any scraping of the pan in step 3. Though we enjoyed the final product (minus the toughness of the pork) we found the oversimplified instructions to be detrimental. The dish was good, though plain, and akin to take-out.




Eriko’s Fritters

We opted for the alternative combination of shrimp, onion and green beans. This recipe was easily the favorite of the night, with everyone having a second helping. Though the recipe does not specify between raw or cooked shrimp, use raw. A precooked shrimp would come out far too tough. Otherwise the instructions were precise, and the outcome delicious. In step 7 it says you can keep the fritters warmed in the oven “if you like.” We highly recommend this as it allows the grease to seep off and the tempura to crisp an additional bit.

If you’re looking to try out basic Japanese cooking, My Japanese Table will help you along your way, but if you’re looking to delve into unique dishes and indigenous foods this book is not for you.