Blog Categories

My blog has over 30 categories featuring Japanese home cooking recipes as well as Chinese, Thai, Korean and fusion dishes. There's something for everybody! Click the More tab below to see what you can find.

Beetroot and Daikon Salad

This Beetroot and Daikon Salad recipe features three vegetables, beetroot, daikon and green beans.

Japanese salads

Shredded carrot salad with raisins, walnuts, and chives on a clear plate. Yellow rose in the blue checkered background.

Carrot and Celery Salad with Orange Rice Vinegar dressing

This salad features some everyday fruits and vegetables - carrot, celery, raisins and some walnuts. The dressing combines freshly squeezed orange juice and rice vinegar along with some extra virgin olive oil.

Japanese salads

Salad on a white plate with parma ham, kaki, cherry tomatoes, avocado, and balsamic glaze, set on a dark tabletop.

Kaki Persimmon and Parma ham salad with Balsamic glaze

The kaki (persimmon) ranks as one of my favourite fruits - it's soft, very sweet and has a beautiful mellow orange colour.

Japanese salads

A bowl of clear Japanese vegan dashi broth on a wooden board, surrounded by dried mushrooms and pieces of dark seaweed, creating a calming mood.

No Cook Vegan Dashi

A good umami-rich dashi is one of the foundations of Japanese cuisine as you probably know.

Vegan dishes

Stir fried sliced eggplant / aubergine with green onions and sesame seeds in a blue and yellow bowl. Colorful and appetizing dish on a light background.

Stir Fried Spicy Soy Eggplant

Health benefits aside, eggplant / aubergine is also a great vegetable for soaking up flavours, so when I make it, I like to accompany it with a rich sauce

Japanese side dishes

A dish of stir fried tofu, red peppers, and greens on rice in a bowl, with a wooden spoon. Background features a colorful patterned cloth.

Stir fried Tofu Donburi

This dish takes about 25 minutes from the work surface to the table and that includes the time to drain the water out of the tofu, so not only is it healthy and delicious, it's quick and quite simple too. What's not to like about that?

Japanese One Bowl Meals

Colorful roasted vegetables with sesame seeds with soy and lemon dressing on a turquoise plate. The background features a striped pattern, creating a fresh, vibrant mood.

Roast Vegetables in a Soy Lemon dressing

Roasted vegetables in a good quality olive oil makes a meat free meal more fillling and satisfying than simmering can and even if you not vegetarian or vegan, it is still a good idea to eat a few main meals every week without any meat.

Vegan dishes

Glass bowl with a colorful salad of cauliflower, red peppers, celery, chickpeas, and cilantro with cumin & honey dressing in a glass bowl on a dark countertop. Two metal spoons beside it.

Chickpea and Cauliflower Salad with Cumin and Honey Dressing

The two main ingredients in the salad are, as the title suggests, chickpeas and cauliflower.

Japanese salads

Colorful salad with cherry tomatoes, yellow peppers, cucumbers, tofu, brown rice and sesame seeds on a white plate. Fork beside, bright setting.

Tofu and Brown Rice salad with Wasabi Soy dressing

This Tofu and Brown Rice salad with Wasabi Soy dressing is a delightful healthy dish with a Japanese flavour of dressing. This dish is also suitable for vegan.

Vegan dishes

A bowl of stir-fried mushrooms with green onions and red peppers, in a patterned blue bowl with a red rim, on a dark background. donburi.

Kinoko Donburi - Mushroom Rice Bowl

This is a vegan rice bowl as well as for mushroom lavers' dish.

Japanese Vegetable dishes

Stir fried sugar snap peas, mushrooms, and corn on a white plate, garnished with parsley. Set on a red and white patterned tablecloth.

Stir Fried Sweetcorn, Sugar snaps and Shiitake

This Stir Fried Sweetcorn, Sugar snaps and shiitake dish is deceptively simple.

Japanese Vegetable dishes

Pumpkin gyoza, fried dumplings on a white plate with a small cup of yellow sauce. Patterned blue and red tablecloth in the background.

Pumpkin Gyoza with Mango dip

Pumpkin Gyoza with Mango dip With Halloween just around the corner, here's a pumpkin recipe that you can prepare in advance and serve on the day at your Halloween party. Now, you might be thinking - aren't gyoza savoury? Mango dip...really? Don't you gyoza serve with a mix of soy sauce and a little vinegar? And you would be right....or, you'd me right most of the time . But I invite you to think a little bit laterally and think about what a gyoza is exactly. Basically, it's

Celebration and Party dishes

Colorful salad with bean sprouts, red and yellow peppers, and green onions on a patterned blue plate, set on a neutral tablecloth.

Your 5-a-day in 5 minutes, Stir fried beansprouts

Super easy stir fried beansprouts recipe.

Japanese side dishes

Bowl of teriyaki-glazed eggplant on rice, topped with scallions and sesame seeds. Red and white patterned bowl with chopsticks.

Sweet Soy Aubergine Donburi

Sweet Soy Aubergine Donburi If you read my recipe blog regularly, you probably know that I love aubergine. I think it is a much under rated vegetable here in the UK, unlike in Japan where it is one of the most popular vegetables in the kitchen. Aubergine is good for you, it contains high amounts of anti-oxidants as well as plenty of trace minerals and elemtns such as folate, copper, magnesium and iron. Aubergine is also very good at soaking up different flavours. In this r

Japanese Vegetable dishes

Daikon Ribbon Salad

Simple and easy Daikon SaladRecipe.

Japanese salads

Sliced lotus root in soy glaze topped with microgreens and sesame seeds on a white plate. Background shows a patterned bowl.

Fried Soy Lotus Root

You will love the texture of this stir fried lotus root dish.

Japanese Vegetable dishes

Tofu cubes with green Shiso herbs sit in soy sauce on a blue patterned plate over a dark, woven surface.

simple Shiso and Soy salad dressing

This is a Japanese dressing using Shiso leaves. Shiso and Soy salad dressing.

Grow and Make your own

Vegetable Gyoza

Vegetable Gyoza I am sure I am not alone in being very, very partial to Gyoza. (AKA Chinese dumplings, AKA Potstickers.) I probably eat gyoza at least once a fortnight and if I am in the mood to be nice and offer my family a choice of evening meal, gyoza are usually somewhere near the top of the list when the hands go up. If you've read any of my restaurant reviews, you'll also know that I regard gyoza as one of my "acid tests" for restaurant quality. I have to admit that I f

Japanese Vegetable dishes