We’re living in the age of food, but with pop culture status comes downsides. For cookbooks, a saturated market often means mass titles trump niche ones. Good for the middling, yes, but for the truly curious lovers of food, not so much. So when a book – or chef, or restaurant – breaks the mould, it’s thrilling. Enter Rice Noodle Fish.
Matt Goulding – think s co-creator – is behind this equally nuanced, long-form, story-telling approach to food journalism. It’s a format worthy of its subject matter, which begs for time, pace and precision: Japan.
First up, this is not a cookbook. That is, there are no recipes – not even one. Bold move.
In recipes’ place is ample space not usually assigned for vivid stories – pages and pages and pages for Goulding’s quest to understand kaiseki, the ancient (and as he argues, austere) art of Japan’s seasonal degustation, and a swathe more to get to the bottom of Osaka people’s propensity for kuiadore: “to eat until you drop”, plus loads of others.
Rice Noodle Fish is, really, a collection of essays – or travelogue, or food memoir – dressed up as food book with photojournalism-style pics.
You can read it from cover to cover, or jump into each chapter – each focusing on one of Japan’s foremost food cities, from Tokyo to Noto, and divided by playful breakouts to match the country’s, at times, highly eccentric culinary culture. Take ‘One Night With The Salarymen’, a visual timeline from 5pm, when the suits flock to the streets to commence the nightly drinking, to 11.30pm, half an hour before the last train departs and the last bowls of ramen are downed to soak up all the booze. Or ‘The Art of Giving’, a how-to guide to omiyage, the Japanese tradition of gifting local food from where you’re from or have just been.
The book kicks off with a foreword by Anthony Bourdain, whom Goulding convinced to back the book for their shared love-bordering-on-obsession with Japanese food and their unadulterated, intellectual telling of how it is. The foreword is, actually, the duo’s correspondence, and about why a book of this sort was needed. It’s inspiring stuff.
It’s not all praise for Rice Noodle Fish. While I loved its anti-formula style, I secretly yearned for a few recipes to try my hand at.
Dishes with teasing descriptions are littered all over the place and call to be made.Think korokke (“Like a Spanish croquette, but with Japanese precision.”), rice water gelato and Asahikawa ‘surf-and-turf’ ramen ("the best from the two extremes of Japan: pork tonkotsu from Kyushu mixed with the best seafood from Hokkaido to create a complex broth of land and sea.").
The images, too, while raw and in situ, could have been sharper and, well, better. It’s also not a book for everyone – you have to love the nitty gritty and all the detail, including the occasional florid and lengthy description of a conger eel or a terry-cloth towel used for cleaning. You have, to coin the term, geek out a bit over Japan. But I’m just nitpicking. For me, Goulding has triumphed in what he set out to do: tell real food stories. And I loved it. I even became a Nipponophile, too.
Explore the book
The Rules of Sushi
Photograph: Sander Jackson Siswojo Source: Hardie Grant
Eat sashimi with chopsticks, but highend nigiri is delicate, and all but the finest motor skills will test the sushi’s integrity. Hands serve as more elegant and perfectly acceptable tools at a sushi bar, as long as they’re clean.
RESPECT THE RICE
It’s the star of this show, and soaking it in soy sauce would compromise a technique that takes most sushi masters years to perfect. Instead, roll the nigiri over and gently dip the edge of the fish in soy sauce without saturating the rice.
HAVE IT THEIR WAY
True sushi masters serve their pieces how they want them eaten—already seasoned with wasabi and soy. Keep it clean: no ginger (it’s there to clean the palate between pieces), no wasabi in your soy sauce and eat the nigiri in one bite. Always one bite.
KEEP PACE
Great sushi isn’t a social outing; it’s a communion between you and the chef behind the counter. Part of that means eating nigiri as soon as it’s made, at the peak of its deliciousness. Holster your smartphone and save the long conversations for the bar afterward.
Extract and images from by Matt Goulding (Hardie Grant, $45, hbk).
