The Sunday Batch

The Sunday Batch

Recipes that wait for a weekday morning.

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Friends around a table sharing Kurozu Soda, Yakibitashi, and Hamanatto Biscotti

Weekend Table

A small menu for feeding friends.

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No Stove

No Stove

What Japan eats when it's too hot to cook.

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Vegan & Vegetarian

Vegan & Vegetarian

Japanese dishes that never needed the fish.

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Temaki sushi hand-rolled at the table with crisp nori, seasoned rice, and fresh fillings
Temaki Sushi — Hand-Rolled at the Table
Hand-rolled temaki sushi at home: crisp Mikawa-bay nori, rice seasoned with Kyoto Chidori-su vinegar, and your favourite fillings — the most generous way to eat sushi. Read more...
Slices of rolled Japanese omelette on a ceramic plate with grated daikon and radish sprouts
Tamagoyaki — Three Eggs, Three Omelettes
Ask a Japanese cook how to make tamagoyaki and the answer will depend on whose kitchen they grew up in. Some houses sweeten it with sugar. Some season it with... Read more...
A cup of pale green iced sencha on a wooden tray with a small teapot and a pitcher of cold water
Iced Sencha — A Small Cup, Brewed Cold
At our tea lesson in Sayama, one of the cups that surprised us most was sencha brewed with ice-cold water. No kettle, no waiting for water to boil. At the... Read more...
A dish of smashed cucumber beside a small plate of dark green shiso miso
Shiso Miso — A Spoonful for Cucumbers and Rice
After sharing our soy-marinated shiso, we wanted to offer you another way to enjoy these fragrant leaves. This time we made shiso miso — a savory, gently sweet paste of... Read more...
A bowl of vegan miso ramen with sweet corn, scallion, carrot and nori, beside a small dish of edamame on a wooden table
Vegan Miso Ramen — Where the Sesame Oil Goes First
Ramen broth has a reputation: bones, a tall pot, the better part of a day. Miso ramen asks for none of it. The smell starts about a minute in, when... Read more...
A small mound of dark, glossy kombu tsukudani with sesame seeds on a patterned square plate
Kombu Tsukudani — What's Left After the Dashi
In a Japanese kitchen, dashi begins with kombu steeped in cold water, and once the broth is done it is easy to assume the kelp has done its job. It... Read more...
A small dish of cucumber and wakame sunomono topped with pieces of fresh tomato
Sunomono — The Cucumber Salad That Isn't Creamy
The cucumber salad going around American kitchens lately is usually a creamy one — sliced thin, dressed, eaten straight from the bowl. The Japanese one on the dinner table is... Read more...
A fillet of saikyo-yaki salmon on a blue-and-white plate, with a cup of tea beside it
Saikyo-yaki — Salmon Marinated in Sweet White Miso
Sweet white miso, a little sake, and mirin — three ingredients that turn an ordinary fillet of salmon into something worth looking forward to. The miso seasons the fish with... Read more...
Steamed chawanmushi in a large blue-and-white bowl with shiitake and green onion, a red spoon lifting a soft spoonful
Chawanmushi — The Last of the Dashi
When we make a liter of dashi, we often use 700 ml for kenchin-jiru or miso soup and save the remaining 300 ml for chawanmushi — a soft, savory egg... Read more...
A lacquer bowl of kenchin-jiru with daikon, carrot, tofu and scallion
Kenchin-jiru — The Soup That Starts the Night Before
Two dried ingredients, cold water, and a night in the refrigerator. That is how this soup begins. By the next evening the broth is ready to become kenchin-jiru — a... Read more...
Sesame dressing with a green salad, vegetable sticks, ground sesame and cold soba noodles
Sesame Dressing — The Bottle That Starts as Seeds
Almost every American supermarket now carries a bottle of Japanese sesame dressing — creamy, nutty, faintly sweet, and familiar even to people who have never seen how it begins. It... Read more...
Spinach dressed in sesame and sprinkled with white sesame seeds, on a brown ceramic plate
Spinach Goma-ae
There is a jar in the Japanese pantry that looks exactly like tahini and behaves nothing like it. The seeds are roasted darker and ground finer, and the result is... Read more...
Roasted hojicha in a pan beside a teapot and a cup of freshly brewed tea
Hojicha in a Frying Pan — A Few Quiet Minutes Before Tea
At a neighborhood tea festival in January, a maker from Sayama set a frying pan on a portable burner and poured in a handful of green tea leaves. Nothing else... Read more...
Sliced hamanatto and mixed nut biscotti sticks on a plate
Hamanatto and Mixed Nut Biscotti
Biscotti that pairs hamanatto's deep saltiness with toasted nuts — good with coffee or Japanese tea, and just as at home as a small sweet alongside a glass of wine.... Read more...
Hojicha Overnight Oats in a jar, topped with banana and kinako
Hojicha Overnight Oats — Set It Sunday, Eat It All Week
No stove, no morning attention — just oats and soy milk soaking overnight with a spoonful of roasted hojicha powder, ready to eat cold from the fridge or gently warmed.... Read more...
Three nori-wrapped onigiri and slices of tamagoyaki packed in a wooden magewappa bento box
Onigiri — One Bowl of Rice, One Rice Ball
Onigiri is what rice becomes when it has to travel — to a lunch box, onto a train, up a hill. There is no technique to learn. You cook rice,... Read more...
Toast and two slices of baguette spread with amber miso honey butter on a white plate
Miso Honey Butter — Make It Once, Spread It All Week
Sweet and salty at once, this butter takes two minutes to stir together and turns any slice of toast into something that tastes deliberate. It's strong — a little goes... Read more...
Three slices of bread spread with tan kinako butter on a wooden board
Kinako Butter — A Nut-Free Spread from the Japanese Pantry
Kinako is roasted soybean flour — nutty, toasty, and quietly sweet, the flavor Japanese children grow up on. Worked into a paste with honey and a little soy milk, it... Read more...
A rice ball wrapped in soy-marinated shiso leaves and sprinkled with white sesame seeds
Soy-Marinated Shiso — The Leaf That Waits for Warm Rice
In Japanese kitchens there are pickles that take months — and then there is this one, which asks for a single night. Shiso leaves, layered in soy sauce and sesame... Read more...
A bowl of rice topped with halved marinated soft-boiled eggs, shredded shiso, nori and sesame
Ajitsuke Tamago — The Sunday Egg You Eat All Week
A soft-boiled egg, marinated in a dashi-soy sauce sharpened with just a touch of sesame oil — cold, jammy, and deeply savory over warm rice. In Japan this is a... Read more...
Matcha ice cream with green shiratama dumplings in a glass bowl, beside a dish of kuromitsu
Tofu Matcha Shiratama — Chewy Dumplings over Ice Cream
Tofu-kneaded matcha shiratama dumplings — soft and chewy — piled over vanilla ice cream and finished with kuromitsu or kinako. A quiet, grown-up Japanese summer sweet. Read more...
A bowl of quick pickles — cabbage, daikon, red pepper and cucumber with a bay leaf and a dried chili
Asazuke — Quick Pickles from Whatever's in the Fridge
In Japanese home kitchens there is a pickle that never sees a crock, a canning jar, or a recipe card. It's called asazuke — "shallow pickling" — and it happens... Read more...
A tall glass of kurozu vinegar soda over ice with a slice of lemon
Kurozu Soda — The Vinegar You Drink on Ice
In the far south of Japan, in a field in Kagoshima filled not with crops but with thousands of black ceramic pots, rice is slowly turning into vinegar under the... Read more...
Wide flat himokawa udon lifted with chopsticks above a plate, with a bowl of dipping broth
Chilled Himokawa Udon — Where the Last Drop Decides
The wide ribbon udon of Gunma, served cold with a dashi tsuyu — and finished by the last raw drop of Tsuru Bishio. Read more...
Hot dashi broth being poured over seared summer vegetables
Yakibitashi — Summer Vegetables in a Dashi Bath
There's a whole category of Japanese cooking built on a simple trick: cook something hot, then let it sit in something cold. Yakibitashi is that trick applied to summer's best... Read more...
A plate of spaghetti bolognese made with hamanatto, centered on a white plate with parsley garnish
Hamanatto Bolognese — Japan's "Anchovy" of Umami
There's a small jar in old Japanese kitchens that works just like anchovy or bottarga: chopped fine and melted into warm oil, it turns an ordinary sauce deep, dark, and... Read more...
Three cubes of chilled tofu topped with scallion and bonito flakes, with a dish of soy sauce
Hiyayakko — The Dinner You Don't Cook
Hiyayakko — The Dinner You Don't Cook There are evenings in a Japanese summer when nobody in the house wants to stand near a flame. For those evenings, Japan long... Read more...
Hot tea poured over rice topped with wasabi, nori, and bonito flakes
Ochazuke — A Bowl for the End of the Day
Ochazuke — A Bowl for the End of the Day There is a bowl in Japan so ordinary that no one thinks to write it down. You take leftover rice,... Read more...
A finished bowl of miso soup with tofu, wakame, and scallion in a red lacquered bowl
Miso Soup — The Quiet Heart of the Japanese Table
Miso Soup — The Quiet Heart of the Japanese Table If you learn to cook one Japanese dish, let it be this. In Japan, miso soup is not a starter... Read more...
Tokyo corn rice just steamed in a donabe, lid lifted to show kernels over rice
Tokyo Corn Rice — Donabe-Steamed, Finished with Soy & Butter
Sweet Tokyo corn folded into donabe rice, finished with soy sauce or butter — our first taste of summer. Read more...

What would you like to cook together?

We often welcome guests from around the world into our home in Tokyo to cook and share a meal. Around the table, the same questions come up: what do I do with the rest of this bottle? How do I make this without fish? What does it go with on an ordinary Tuesday? These recipes are another way to share that table with you, wherever your kitchen may be.

So tell us what's in your kitchen. A jar you're not sure how to finish, a dish you'd love to make vegetarian or vegan, an ingredient you avoid, a night when dinner has to be quick — write to us at hi@cookgood.jp. A few words are plenty. We read every one, and we use them as the starting point for recipes we cook, test, and share here.

We'd love to hear what's cooking in your kitchen, too.

Yan & Keiko