The Quiet Kitchen

CONTENTS

INTRODUCTIONWhat My Hands Remember3
CHAPTER 1Eighteen, at the Bottom of the Kitchen9
CHAPTER 2The Morning Broth27
PRIMERWhat Is Dashi? — A Short PrimerADDED43
CHAPTER 3Knives and Whetstones53
PRIMERHow to Read a Japanese KnifeADDED69
CHAPTER 4Makanai: The Staff-Meal School77
CHAPTER 5Recipes — Spring and Summer, Twenty-Four Dishes93
CHAPTER 6Recipes — Autumn and Winter, Twenty-Four Dishes127
PRIMERTwenty Pantry StaplesADDED161
CHAPTER 7A Place of My Own173
EPILOGUETo the Next Kitchen185

All 48 recipes give measurements in grams and in US cups and ounces.

SAMPLE PAGES

Read the Introduction

The complete text of the Introduction, set as it would appear in the finished book.

INTRODUCTION (COMPLETE TEXT)

INTRODUCTION

What My Hands Remember

Recipes live in the hands before they live on paper. After fifteen years in a kitchen, that is the one thing I am sure of.

This book records the fifteen years between the day I entered a small Japanese restaurant at eighteen and the day I opened my own place at thirty-three, together with the forty-eight recipes my hands learned along the way. The first half is the story of the training; the second half is the recipe collection.

The story comes first for a reason. Copying the numbers in a recipe will not give you the same dish. When I draw dashi — the broth at the base of Japanese cooking — I do not watch a thermometer. I watch the size of the bubbles rising from the bottom of the pot, and the way the edge of the kelp begins to sway. I wanted to show how that kind of knowledge settles into the hands before asking you to cook from the second half.

I have hidden nothing — not the measurements, not the seasoning of the staff meals, not the failures of my own restaurant. I am a cook, not a writer; this book began as spoken answers to an interviewer's questions, later reworked in my own words. For readers new to Japanese cooking, this edition adds short chapters on dashi, Japanese knives, and the pantry. Read in any order you like — but come back, sometime, for the story of the hands.

— End of the Introduction —

3THE QUIET KITCHEN

Want more of the interior? Chapter One and the original Introduction can be read in Japanese on the Japanese edition's sample page.

EDITION COMPARISON

How it differs from the Japanese original

Cross-border publishing is never a plain language swap. Same material, same fifteen years — but the title, cover, and structure are redesigned for the market. More on the Global Publishing page.

JAPANESE ORIGINAL — TRAINING AND THE ROAD TO A RESTAURANT

COOKING

厨房の手仕事

BOOK://

厨房の手仕事 "Handwork of the Kitchen." For Japanese readers, dashi and the kitchen hierarchy need no explanation — the book simply tells the story.

IntroWhat My Hands Remember (はじめに)
01Eighteen, at the Bottom of the Kitchen
02The Morning Broth
03Knives and Whetstones
04The Staff-Meal School
05Recipes: Spring and Summer, 24 Dishes
06Recipes: Autumn and Winter, 24 Dishes
07Thirty-Three, a Place of My Own
Ep.To the Next Kitchen

THIS EDITION — WITH PRIMERS FOR ENGLISH-LANGUAGE READERS

JAPANESE FOOD & MEMOIR

The Quiet
Kitchen

Fifteen Years in a Small Kitchen in Japan

BOOK://

The Quiet Kitchen The same story, restructured so a reader new to Japanese cooking never has to stop and search.

IntroWhat My Hands Remember
01Eighteen, at the Bottom of the Kitchen
02The Morning Broth
＋What Is Dashi? — A Short PrimerADDED
03Knives and Whetstones
＋How to Read a Japanese KnifeADDED
04Makanai: The Staff-Meal School
05–06Recipes: 48 Dishes for Four Seasons
＋Twenty Pantry StaplesADDED
07A Place of My Own
Ep.To the Next Kitchen

The title is not a translation. 厨房の手仕事 — roughly "Handwork of the Kitchen" — becomes The Quiet Kitchen: a face designed for English-language shelves, not a dictionary rendering.
Three primer chapters are added — dashi, Japanese knives, pantry staples. What needs no explanation in the Japanese edition becomes a chapter here.
All 48 recipes carry dual measurements: grams alongside US cups and ounces.
The training and restaurant chapters stay intact, with short notes where Japanese kitchen customs would otherwise puzzle a reader.
The cover changes direction: from vertical Japanese type on deep persimmon to horizontal Latin type on cream. A different market means a different face.

A book like this can start in your kitchen.

If handwritten recipe cards and a prep notebook can become a book, so can the records of your own working life. You don't have to start by writing.

Start a Book Like This See All Samples

This sample is a fictional work created as a production example. It depicts no real people, restaurants, or organizations.

Table of Contents

Read the Introduction

What My Hands Remember

How it differs from the Japanese original

A book like this can start in your kitchen.

Copyright