Rie McClenny grew up in a small seaside city in southwestern Japan in the Hiroshima prefecture, and spent much of her childhood digging for clams, hanging out at her grandmother’s kissaten (tearoom and cafe), and watching her mom fold gyoza dumplings “faster than my eyes could follow.”
In her debut cookbook, “Make it Japanese: Simple Recipes for Everyone” (Potter, $30), McClenny says she didn’t feel the urge to learn to cook those dishes herself until she landed in rural West Virginia as an exchange student. To appease her homesickness, she got creative in adapting fried rice, soy-glazed chicken legs, coffee jelly, and other family favorites within the limitations of the local supermarkets.
Later she gained restaurant experience and a degree from the French Culinary Institute in New York, moved to Los Angeles with her Texan husband, and began developing recipes and producing viral videos for BuzzFeed’s food media brand, Tasty. When hosting dinner parties she enjoys introducing her American friends to Japanese home-style dishes they didn’t expect.
“There was an assumption that Japanese food was either a multicourse sushi extravaganza or a theatrical Benihana-style teppanyaki with onion volcanos, when in reality Japanese home cooking is simple, humble and nutritious,” she writes in the introduction.
Those adjectives apply to the Ginger Pork Chops, Corn Rice, and Cabbage Salad with Lemon-Miso Dressing I made for a weeknight meal, enticing me to try others that sound just as unfussy. Next up will be Yakisoba, pan-fried noodles bathed in a savory-sweet sauce McClenny concocted with common staples to mimic ready-made yakitori sauce because she’s “never able to finish the bottle before it expires.” She also offers a tip using dry spaghetti and baking soda so readers can avoid a trip to an Asian market for traditional noodles.
The result, she writes, is a family-friendly 30-minute dish whose smell reminds her of her grandmother’s cooking “and all the hours spent with her at the kissaten.”
Susan Puckett is a cookbook author and former food editor of The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Follow her at susanpuckett.com.
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