The Japanese Pantry

Indispensable Japanese pantry dishes from Emiko Davies, author of Gohan: Everyday Japanese Cooking.

The Japanese Pantry is a follow-up to Gohan: Everyday Japanese Cooking | Memories and Stories From My Family’s Kitchen, Davies’s tribute to her mother’s family and her soul food—Japanese home cooking.

In The Japanese Pantry, Davies explores the pantry items essential to Japanese home cooking—simple, easy-to-find ingredients that can be combined with fresh produce and a few other basics like tofu, rice, and noodles to create delicious and authentic Japanese food no matter where you are.

Each chapter explores one of these essential ingredients—soy sauce, miso, rice vinegar, seaweed, sake, sesame, and tea—including information about the history and production of these in Japan, as well as Davies’s thoughtful and approachable recipes. In helping readers get to know these pantry essentials, Davies hopes to give home cooks the confidence to make authentic Japanese dishes that are inherently simple and full of flavor.Emiko Davies is an award-winning Australian-Japanese food writer, photographer and author. Growing up in a diplomatic family, she spent most of her life living in countries other than her own, from China to the USA, but has called Italy home for the past twenty years.

The Japanese Pantry will be Emiko's seventh book. Her previous books include Gohan: Everyday Japanese Cooking (2023) published be Smith Street Books, – winner of the 2024 Fortnum & Mason Cookery Book of the Year and the Andre Simon Special Commendation award – Cinnamon & Salt: Cicchetti in Venice (2022), Torta della Nonna (2021), Tortellini at Midnight (2019), Acquacotta (2017) and Florentine: The True Cuisine of Florence (2016), published by Hardie Grant.

Emiko runs a cooking school and natural wine bar in Tuscany with her sommelier husband, where she shares her passion for seasonal, simple home cooking.