In this pioneering work, Shizuo Tsuji, one of the most prominent figures in Japan's culinary world, takes all that is good about Japanese food and brings it into the home. The book presents over 100 authentic recipes (manageable even for the novice cook). Tsuji also explains many of the techniques used. He stresses the importance of using fresh, seasonal, and local ingredients; and the recipes call only for ingredients that are readily available in supermarkets and Asian grocery stores in the West. A section on bento boxes offers a wide variety of ideas for combining the recipes in the book into these popular, portable meal options. The Cooking Tips section includes such basic, essential recipes as dashi; and covers topics like cleaning squid, soaking dried shitake mushrooms, toasting and crumbling nori seaweed, and using bamboo rolling mats.