Kaiseki at Home

This book is without a doubt my absolute best find and most treasured resource! I initially heard about Japan’s traditional 72 microseasons called KOU during classes in culinary school. Every micro season is spanning about 5 days and has plants, flowers, vegetables and sea food associated to it. It is basically the backbone of traditional Kaiseki Cuisine, but it is also somewhat outdated.

It might still be relevant for a small group of people doing “Chabana” (tea ceremony ikebana), but every day people don’t use it anymore. So naturally it is not a very popular topic for books. I was searching for over a year (!) until I finally found a reasource that had all the information that I was trying to get in one single well thought out book. It has beautiful illustrations and really focuses on every single one of the micro seasons. Naturally I find the vegetable and sea food parts especially intriguing, but the seaonal flowers and decorations are very valuable as well. If I lost all my books this would be the first on I would buy again.

One of the joys I get out of this book is seeing the principles and learnings applied directly in my work place. One of the fantastic parts of Kaiseki Cusine is the ability to awaken nostalgic feelings in our customers. One might reference the moon viewing in Oktober and surprise the guest with some “Tsukimi Dango” (Moonviewing sweets). Or offer a dish of “Ehomaki” Sushi for the beginning of spring. Even if our customers were to come every day – knowing the intricacies of the 72 KOU gives us chefs the ability to offer novel and exciting experiences every time.

I am adding a link to the book here. For transparency I want to tell you that I might earn a small comission (at no additional cost to you) from qualifying purchases as an Amazon associate. You can actually order things directly from Amazon Japan if you can’t find them on your own country’s page! You just need to log into Amazon Japan with your usual username and password and put your home adress in. It will automatically calculate shipping costs and customs taxes (if needed) so you don’t get any nasty surprises. I have personally gotten a lot of stuff from Japan this way when I wasn’t living here.

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