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An insightful guide
to
Japanese cuisine
for diners and travelers
by an established authority
Why Japanese cuisine
is special
Japanese cooks are legendary for the beauty of their dishes. Though more complex cuisines exist,
none comes close to matching Japan's culinary aesthetics.
Insights on
Japanese cuisines
 Ingredients
are artistically cut and arranged not merely to please the senses but to conform to elaborate
systems of cultural symbolism.
The
roots of Japanese cuisine are largely sixth-to-eighth century Chinese.
Rice,
usually boiled and served at the end of a meal, is the main starch staple in
Japanese cuisine.
Cooking
varies from region to region. For instance, the Kansai style cooking (around Kyoto and Osaka in
the south) is perceptibly sweeter than the Edo style (around Tokyo).
Even
sushi varies by region. In Tokyo the fish is pressed onto two-inch oblong rice balls (the style
followed by virtually all sushi bars outside Japan), but in Osaka the fish is pressed onto rice
in a mold, then usually cut into squares or rectangles.
Japanese cooking methods
More so than any other cuisine, Japanese cuisine is best understood in perspective by knowing its
four principal cooking methods:
Agemono
- These are fried foods. Famous dishes include Tempura, Kagiage (a batter dipped, deep
fried patty of vegetables and shrimp), and Tonkatsu (a breaded, deep-fried pork cutlet).
Mushimono - Steamed
foods: The celebrated dish is Chawan Mushi, an egg custard containing chicken and vegetables.
Nimono - These foods are
boiled. The best known subcategory is nabemono, one-pot tabletop cookery in which the ingredients are
simmered in a lightly seasoned broth, then usually dipped into a flavorful sauce. Nabemono's best-known
dishes are Sukiyaki Shabu Shabu (beef, vegetables, and bean curd), Mizutaki (somewhat
like Shabu Shabu, but with chicken instead of beef), Yosenabe (fish, shellfish, and vegetables), and
the uncomplicated Yudofo (bean curd).
Oyako
Donburi - Essentially, a donburi is a bowl of rice topped with a seasoned
preparation. The Oyako Donburi is uses egg and chicken.
  
Yakimono - Foods that
are broiled. Some of the best known dishes are Yakitori (marinated skewer broiled
chicken), Teriyaki (broiled meat or fish first marinated in a sweetened sake and soy-sauce
mixture), Shioyaki (fish salted for an hour or two, then skewer-broiled), and Teppan
Yaki (food cooked on a small tabletop grill).
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