Asian Pickles: Japan, by experienced food writer and cookbook author Karen Solomon, featured recipes for Japanese sweet, sour, salty, cured, and fermented tsukemono. If you've ever eaten pickled ginger with your sushi or sashimi, you've eaten tsukemono. The cucumber salad often served with Japanese meals is tsukemono. So is the piece of yellow pickled daikon or turnip served in many bento boxes.
This book teaches you how to make your own tsukemono, and most of the recipes are relatively simple. The majority do not require a trip to a specialty market for the ingredients (at least I can find almost all of them in my well-stocked normal Texas grocery store). Some make pickles in under an hour, some take a month or so to produce the desired result, but most of them will please western palates as well as Japanese ones. I am excited about making my own pickled ginger without the red coloring and preservatives -- and to have the chance to make it according to my own taste. There are several other recipes I want to try as well: wasabi pickled carrots will surely be a hit at my next party, and the pickled Asian pear with lemon sounds particularly delicious.
This book is part of a series of books about Asian pickles from various countries (Korea, Indonesia, and India are planned as e-books to be published in 2013, and in 2014 a print edition collecting all of the e-books and more is planned). I'm especially looking forward to the Korea book -- kimchee!
I reviewed the e-book edition of this book provided by NetGalley.com. Thanks to publisher Ten Speed Press and NetGalley for the opportunity!
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