On 12/11/2009 16:39, phaeton wrote:
> Today I was browsing Vietnamese cookbooks at the Half Price
> Bookstore. I've recently decided that I need to return to my "I'm
> going to adopt a more Asian diet" initiative. The one I abandoned
> last spring when I discovered that the Japanese pretty much don't cook
> anything. There were exactly four* books. In one of the books
> (actually three, see below) mentioned marinating strips of beef, then
> storing them uncovered on a wire rack in the refrigerator for 2 days
> to dry them out. In hotter seasons, you can do the same in the sun.
> The result is like beef jerky, except you still have to cook it first.
>


There are definitely lots of cooked Japanese dishes. This time of year
"nabe" dishes are quite common. That would include sukiyaki, oden,
mizutaki, shinjaga and tons of permutations of miso shiro.

Then of course there are all of the things cooked as tempura, other
dishes include saba misoni. Then various yakimono (pan friend or grilled
dishes) such as yakitoti, okonomiyaki, yaki onigiri, gyoza etc.

> I didn't know you could do that!
>
>
>
> *Books: There were four books. One book didn't refer to any of the
> recipes or dishes by its native name, or even mention it; i.e. "Spring
> Rolls" instead of "gỏi cuốn", and had a lot of recipes that the author
> admitted to fabricating for her restaurant in SoCal. It also had no
> recipe for Phở of any sort.
>
> The other three books were three different sizes, had three different
> titles, and had three different cover types, but were all identical on
> the inside, to the page. Recipes, pictures, text. Odd.
>
> I bought neither, for now. The nearby Barnes and Noble had "ethnic
> cooking, alphabetical by nation" but their section only went to
> "Spain".
>
> -J