Thursday 30 June 2016
6:00pm – 7:00pm

Cook Japanese at Home

Drinks reception from 8:00pm

13/14 Cornwall Terrace, Outer Circle (entrance facing Regent's Park), London NW1 4QP

Organised by the Daiwa Anglo-Japanese Foundation

By Kimiko Barber

Published by Kyle Books

The title of Kimiko Barber’s new book Cook Japanese At Home says it all. As a Japanese-born food writer and cookery teacher, Kimiko has been encouraging people to cook for many years. She believes that home cooking puts you in control of what and how you eat, which ultimately leads you to take charge of your own wellbeing.

The food scene in Britain has improved significantly since Kimiko’s arrival in the early 1970’s as a school girl; multicultural Britain has led to an array of diversity and innovation within British cuisine. Missing her mother’s recipes, young Kimiko then began to cook Japanese dishes herself, ultimately blossoming into the expert on Japanese cuisine she is today. Japanese food has gained worldwide popularity: it was awarded heritage status by UNESCO in 2013; one in ten new London restaurants since 2014 are Japanese; and sushi bento boxes are now commonly sold alongside sandwiches. Nevertheless, it is still considered somewhat ‘difficult’ to cook Japanese food at home.

In this talk, Kimiko aims to dispel these fears and to reveal that Japanese food in fact has developed through a series of adaptations of all things foreign, starting with the essential staple of rice.

About the contributors

Kimiko Barber

Kimiko Barber was born in Kobe, Japan and arrived in the UK in the early 1970s. She quickly realized that cooking was essential for survival and recalled on her childhood memories of her three grandmothers – one in the cosmopolitan city of Kobe, the ancient capital of Kyoto and a rustic country kitchen in rural Shikoku. After a successful decade in international investment banking both in the City and in Tokyo, a chance visit to ‘Books for Cooks’ cookery bookshop in Notting Hill changed everything – sayonara finance, hello cooking. Her first award-winning book Sushi Taste and Technique was published in 2002, launching her food writing career. Her latest and eighth book Cook Japanese at Home was published in May 2016. She teaches Japanese cooking at a number of cookery schools across London.