Stunning Japanese cookbook

"Our life centers on the farm and the field. We eat what we grow." --Nancy Singleton Hachisu,

Japanese Farm Food offers a unique window into life on a Japanese farm through the simple, clear-flavored recipes cooked from family crops and other local, organic products. The multitude of vibrant images by Kenji Miura of green fields, a traditional farmhouse, antique baskets, and ceramic bowls filled with beautiful, simple dishes are interwoven with Japanese indigo fabrics to convey an intimate, authentic portrait of life and food on a Japanese farm. With a focus on fresh and thoughtfully sourced ingredients, the recipes in Japanese Farm Food are perfect for fans of farmers' markets, and for home cooks looking for accessible Japanese dishes. Personal stories about family and farm life complete this incredible volume.

American born and raised, Nancy Singleton Hachisu lives with her husband and teenage sons on a rural Japanese farm, where they prepare these 160 bright, seasonal dishes. The recipes are organized logically with the intention of reassuring you how easy it is to cook Japanese food. Not just a book about Japanese food, Japanese Farm Food is a book about love, life on the farm, and community. Covering everything from pickles and soups to noodles, rice, and dipping sauces, with a special emphasis on vegetables, Hachisu demystifies the rural Japanese kitchen, laying bare the essential ingredients, equipment, and techniques needed for Japanese home cooking.

"Nancy Hachisu is...intrepid. Outrageously creative. Intensely passionate. Committed. True and real. I urge you to cook from this book with abandon, but first read it like a memoir, chapter by chapter, and you will share in the story of a modern-day family, a totally unique and extraordinary one." --Patricia Wells

"This book is both an intimate portrait of Nancy's life on the farm, and an important work that shows the universality of an authentic food culture." --Alice Waters

"The modest title Japanese Farm Food turns out to be large, embracing and perhaps surprising. Unlike the farm-to-table life as we know it here, where precious farm foods are cooked with recipes, often with some elaboration, real farm food means eating the same thing day after day when it’s plentiful, putting it up for when it's not, and cooking it very, very simply because the farm demands so much more time in the field than in the kitchen. This beautiful, touching, and ultimately common sense book is about a life that's balanced between the idea that a life chooses you and that you in turn choose it and then live it wholeheartedly and largely. Thank you, Nancy, for sharing your rich, intentional and truly inspiring life." --Deborah Madison

"Nancy Hachisu’s amazing depth of knowledge of Japanese food and culture shines through in every part of this book. You will feel as if you live next door to her...savoring and learning her down-to-earth approach to cooking and to loving food." --Hiroko Shimbo

Footnote:

I saw this utterly gorgeous hardback cook book at the home of a friend over the holidays. It is a US title published by Andrews McMeel who do not seem to have an agent in NZ. US$35.

The text above is from the publishers website.