Pork & Mizuna Salad with Crispy Gyoza Skin Many years ago on a trip to Kyoto with my parents and my sister, we found ourselves stuck in the pouring rain and we ended up in a random casual eatery to seek refuge. As soon as we went in, we saw a family eating a delicious meal and this dish caught our eye so we ordered it. Well, it’s stayed on our family recipe repertoire since. It’s absolutely delicious. SERVES: 2 PHOTOGRAPHY: SAFIA SHAKARCHI   Ingredients 200g pork mince 200g mizuna ½ a pack of gyoza skins 500ml vegetable oil 2cm knob of ginger, peeled and grated 1tbsp soy sauce ..read more

Kinoko Takikomi Gohan ~ Assorted Mushroom Rice I always smile at the Japanese word for mushrooms – ‘kinoko’. It means the child of the tree, which I think is so cute. As its autumn, I’ve chosen to use seasonal Japanese mushrooms: maitake, shimeji and shiitake. The aromas are just incredible as you open the lid of your cooked mushroom rice! What’s great about this dish is that you can make it all year round, choosing different seasonal mushrooms and each time, enjoying different aromas and flavour profiles. I’d recommend making it with a side of our saba no miso ni dish ~ miso-ginger mackere ..read more

Saba No Miso Ni ~ Sweet Miso + Ginger Mackerel If you like miso black cod, you’ll also enjoy this dish. It’s such an old school classic Japanese dish and reminds me of being in Tokyo at my obachan’s (grandma’s) kitchen as it’s something she used to make for us a lot. I only really appreciated how good this dish is once I was a bit older, but the sweet miso with plenty of ginger just goes so well with an oily fish like mackerel. I recommend batch-making this and enjoying it the next day too.   SERVES: 2 PHOTOGRAPHY: SAFIA SHAKARCHI SEASON: AUTUMN   Ingredients 2 fillets of mack ..read more

Supperclub on 2nd and 3rd September 2022 in the heart of Queen's Park Join us and The Salusbury Winestore for a Japanese Supperclub! The ticket price covers the set menu shown below (plus service) and a wine and sake pairing will be available on the night. We only have 28 tickets to this event so please don't delay! They're available HERE.  ..read more

The other day I was chatting with Maria, one of our team members and we started talking about food (as per usual haha) and her cooking skills.  “Yea I do cook, just my boyfriend is better than me and he usually cooks for us” - she said. “I like cooking; I also love the idea of trying out new cuisines, but I don’t feel like I have the skills! If I’m cooking after I get back from work, I usually end up being a bit lazy to be honest and just cooking dishes I know. If I’m just cooking for me, I’m like, whatever, I’ll throw something really easy together but if I was cooking for both of us, I ..read more

If you’re in our community, you know by now that miso soup is ridiculously healthy. It’s made of soy bean paste, yes, miso mixed with dashi (fish stock) and I try to have this as much as possible and I really think it’s the beauty secret of all Japanese people.  In its most basic state, Miso is a fermented paste and without getting too much into the science of it, fermented foods are packed with probiotics, which are super good for you! Most people know about Miso as the main ingredient found in miso soup however, you can also use miso as an ingredient in many other dishes like meat mari ..read more

I love anniversaries as it forces you to stop what you’re doing and reflect. The first word that comes into mind is WOW (articulate I know) – but it’s been such a crazy 2 years. I’d actually even missed the exact anniversary as I had my head down; LinkedIn had to remind me and even then, it had passed by the time I’d noticed. It was a week ago! So for Founder's Friday today, I thought I'd be nice to share some special highlights of these 2 years.   Since coming up with the idea on a run during lockdown 2020 and running the business out of our flat in London Bridge where we threw away a ..read more

Fluffy, Japanese shortcake (or shorto-cakey as we say)  With strawberries in season and tasting so good right now, I thought I'd bake a Japanese short cake as my sister and her (new!) hubby were coming over for dinner. I don't get to bake as often as I'd like, but I really enjoy zoning out listening to sets on @SoundCloud and baking away!  Here's my recipe: Cake: 3 eggs 90g flour 90g sugar 1 teaspoon vanilla extract 30g melted butter Sugar syrup: 20g sugar 40ml boiling water Cream: 300ml cream 30g sugar + around 200g sliced strawberries  Middle of the cake: thick ..read more

    So - since it's a bank holiday and most of us are off work, I wanted to share one of my all time favourite recipes ‘langoustine and amaebi (sweet raw prawn) ramen with shiso’. It's so tasty and light! ⁠ It sounds fancy and complicated to make but I promise it's actually not. ⁠ ⁠ It's impressive for any guests coming over for some lunch in the garden and what's even better is that you could batch make the broth and keep some in the freezer! ⁠ ⁠ The Langoustine Broth ⁠ 8 servings⁠ ⁠ - bag of langoustine heads and claws ⁠(around 1KG)⁠ - 30 amaebi (sweet raw prawns) ⁠ - 3 celery sta ..read more

Welcome back to the second part of our Japanese Healthy Eating Series! If you missed our previous article, we talked about healthy Japanese eating habits. We wanted to go to the foundation of Japanese meals: rice + miso soup. This comes with every traditional Japanese meal. So, is it healthy? There’s so much that we could talk about, that we’ve decided to split them up into two parts, starting with rice today.    Your regular rice but better. If you know me well enough I love rice and can’t live without it. Not just Japanese people but I think many Asians would say the same. I feel ..read more