In "Japan: The Cookbook," publishers Phaidon found the ideal food writer in Nancy Singleton Hachisu.
While this is Hachisu’s first book with Phaidon, it's her third book on Japanese food, and it comes after 30 years of living in Japan, collecting and cooking hundreds of recipes, writing hundreds of thousands of words about Japanese food and continuously advocating for the country's culinary heritage.
At over 450 pages, it's a door stopper of a book. For the past two months it has rested on the floor in our living room in easy reach of my sous-chef, who just turned 5 and regularly thumbs through it — or falls over it. So far we've worked through about a dozen recipes, selected together from the stunning photographs that accompany many of the 400-plus recipes.