The Well-Flavored Vegetable: Novel and Traditional Vegetable Recipes from Japan

Here, for the first time in English is the multihued, variegated world of tsukemono (TSOO-KEH-MO-NO) , Japan's many-flavored "pickled" things. Tsukemono means roughly "something immersed," with the implication that the something receives goodness from what it is immersed in. This is a whole genre of preparing food--vegetables mostly--largely without heat, and with no great loss of nourishment, and with texture and flavor enhance. Most tsukemono involve the technique of pickling in whole or part, but with a startling, wide range of different pickling beds and liquids. Some meld into the realm of salads; some expand the class of preserved foods far beyond anything in the West; and some are envoys into the kingdom of cooking. Tsukemono may be made in as little as one hour or even ten minutes before eating or may be allowed to mature for years or centuries. They also employ techniques not yet explored in the West. THE WELL-FLAVORED VEGETABLE will open a new frontier in food preparation and evoke a creative response in everyone who cooks--at home or professionally--for the enjoyment of everyone who eats.