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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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...
Tamagoyaki — Three Eggs, Three Omelettes
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 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 Goma-ae
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...
Miso Honey Butter — Make It Once, Spread It All Week
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...
Kinako Butter — A Nut-Free Spread from the Japanese Pantry
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...
Soy-Marinated Shiso — The Leaf That Waits for Warm Rice
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...
Ajitsuke Tamago — The Sunday Egg You Eat All Week
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...
Tofu Matcha Shiratama — Chewy Dumplings over Ice Cream
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...
Asazuke — Quick Pickles from Whatever's in the Fridge
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...
Kurozu Soda — The Vinegar You Drink on Ice
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...
Chilled Himokawa Udon — Where the Last Drop Decides
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...
Hiyayakko — The Dinner You Don't Cook
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...