You have to observe nature carefully. … You have to look at a really good ingredient—and once you take that ingredient, you don't want to fuss with it too much, because the more you fuss with it, you're going to basically spoil it. There is a pure joy to eating something straight from nature. That's enlightenment for me. - Sonoko Sakai
*In response to travel restrictions and social distancing due to COVID-19, this week's interview was recorded remotely and not in-studio. Thanks for listening.*
LOS ANGELES—This week, we're excited to welcome cookbook author Sonoko Sakai to Salt + Spine, the show on cookbooks.
Sonoko is a writer and teacher based in California. Over the course of her career, she’s developed recipes, taught cooking classes, and written articles and cookbooks to promote Japanese food and culture.
Her first cookbook—The Poetical Pursuit of Food: Japanese Recipes for American Cooks—was published in 1986, and her most recent, Japanese Home Cooking, features 100 recipes that get to the heart of accessible Japanese cuisine.
In today's show, we talk with Sonoko about:
growing up around the world, and how that shaped her view of food and cooking from an early age;
about how a career in film production eventually prompted her to write her first cookbook;
and how she thinks about making the tenets of Japanese home cooking accessible to new audiences.
Learning the art of simple, joyful Japanese home cooking with author Sonoko Sakai