This Vegetarian Cookbook Showcases the Diversity of Japanese Cuisine

Outside of Japan itself, Japanese food seems to me—an admitted novice when it comes to the country’s vast offerings—to be frequently oversimplified, subject to pigeonholing (or overemphasis on its “greatest hits”) in America and abroad. Japanese food equals sushi, some people think; others focus on the fried stuff, and don’t take the time to explore beyond tempura, karaage, and katsu. Some associate Japanese food primarily with noodle-based soups like udon and ramen, while mall food courts could lead others to believe that Japanese food is simply teriyaki chicken. Because of all of the optics of sushi and pork broth, there’s also a common belief that it would be difficult to be vegetarian or vegan in Japan, when in actuality, Japanese cuisine has a long and beautiful tradition of plant-based cooking. A new cookbook from Phaidon is persuasive evidence that Japanese vegetarian food is rich, diverse, and certainly not boring.

Japan: The Vegetarian Cookbook is a sequel of sorts to Phaidon’s eminently popular Japan: The Cookbook. For fans of both plant-forward cuisine and Japanese food, it’s the ultimate [emoji handshake], which is to say that it represents both interests beautifully. This book says, “Sure, sushi’s great, but Japanese food also comprises dishes like deep-fried koyadofu with green nori, buttered bamboo shoot with sansho leaf miso, and fiddlehead ferns in sesame vinegar.” It may seem trite to point out, but “Japanese food,” like any other cuisine that spans a nation of regions and cooking styles, is a vast canvas of brilliant flavors and distinct regional cuisines—much of it meat-free.

The greatness of Phaidon’s cookbook series is that most of its books aim, quite ambitiously, to capture a whole idea, even if that idea is made up of many other, smaller ideas. Some entries are concise, like the new book from popular London restaurant BAO, while others, like Magnus Nilsson’s The Nordic Cookbook, are magnificently sprawling and supremely challenging. With this cookbook, the idea is broad but focused, and its straightforwardness mirrors how author Nancy Singleton Hachisu feels about Japanese food.

The introduction gives a brief personal history, ending with three maxims for approaching vegetarian Japanese cooking: Take your time and cook with precision; enjoy the ingredients; and look into your heart through the food. Later, it offers a very compelling history of Japanese vegetarian food, taking us through the rise of fermented soy products, the religious and political dominion over meat-eating, Japan’s 72 microseasons, and some reflections on food and nature. One interesting thing I learned here is that at one time Buddhists didn't eat five alliums—garlic, red garlic, garlic chive, negi (Japanese leeks), and rakkyo (a form of onion)—because “they were considered to stimulate sexual fantasy.” (If that’s the case, maybe I can fire my therapist and just change my diet!) The opening pages conclude with a great guide to observing and enjoying Japanese dining traditions properly, like how to handle chopsticks and whether to talk while eating (don’t do it).

The book is divided up by types of dishes: dressed, vinegared, deep-fried, steamed, stir-fried, grilled, soups, sweets, and so on. Naturally, there’s a section on pickling and preserving, and another one entirely on rice. Hachisu offers charming explanations of some of the dishes, discussing how she discovered them and whether they’re traditional offerings or newer creations.

Cooking (or just flipping) through these dishes, you quickly learn a few things. First, a couple of core ingredients, like dashi, shoyu, and hon mirin, are absolutely essential to much of Japan’s cuisine, and this book gives fabulous directions on how to make or find them. The second and more central takeaway from this book, which really stood out to me, is how few ingredients many of these dishes require in the first place, but how complex some of those individual components actually are. For example, the grilled eggplant in dashi has Japanese eggplant, Happo dashi, usukuchi shoyu, and grated young ginger; but once you make the Happo dashi by cooking konbu dashi, sake, mirin, and salt together, you get the sense that the sum of these ingredients is both technical and phenomenal. Elsewhere, boiled bamboo shoots are combined with two kinds of miso, dark roasted sesame oil, and a small dried red chile to produce a rich umami flavor. For the okra with miso mayonnaise, we’re looking at only brown rice miso, homemade soy milk mayonnaise, and okra, yet the result is dazzling (if not only because you made your own mayo). Often, these recipes are about coaxing deep flavor from a few precisely cooked ingredients (and you could surely apply that to other elements of life).

TL;DR: Japan: The Vegetarian Cookbook is another very solid geographic-based cookbook in Phaidon’s powerful lineup. Reading through this plant-forward volume, you get a rich sense of the diversity of Japan’s cuisine and the “less is more” mentality behind a lot of it. From pickled root vegetables to complex, warming soups, this book covers it all—and, of course, there’s the basic dashi and tempura for beginners alongside the advanced ideas and unique ingredient combinations (like chilled grilled miso soup with myoga and somen) for those with more masterful backgrounds in Japanese cooking.

Pick up Japan: The Vegetarian Cookbook on Amazon.

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