Rinshinomori

about me

Hi, I'm Nona and thanks for stopping by. I'm one of the new hosts in Asian Forum along with Celticevergreen and veteran hosts Leggy Peggy, Potscrubber, and Stella Mae. Please come and join us in Asian food conversations at http://www.recipezaar.com/bb/viewforum.zsp?f=33 and say hi to us!

I appreciate all foods from the most simple to the Michelin star recipes. To me, it's all about taste, presentation, and love that goes into cooking. To all who love to share their joy of cooking with others, hats off to you! Besides Japanese cooking, I am an avid Korean cooking fan. Japanese and Korean recipes are like yin and yang. Outside of Asian cooking, I also love Italian and French cooking - again yin and yang.

Born in Tokyo, Japan. From being a military brat to a USAF father who served in Korea and twice in Vietnam and my husband who served in US Navy, lived in various places since leaving Tokyo in my teen years - AZ, Lancaster County PA, Folsom CA, Okinawa (yeah Kubasaki!), and N. California to name a few.

I recently retired after 30+ years from the best place in the world to work and the best scientific community in the world - U.S. Geological Survey. Also for fun in the evenings after my regular work day, I was a chef assistant at a culinary school assisting famous and not so famous cookbook authors and chefs conducting cooking classes. I sure learned a lot from helping them.



I used pictures of my Mom and I because she was my greatest influence and inspiration including my love of cooking. I can't think of another finer Japanese cook than my mother. She instinctively knew how to make Japanese food taste better. Now that she is gone and I can no longer share my recipes with her, I want to continue my Japanese cooking love affair by sharing some of my own creations and those that I gathered from various Japanese sources with anyone who is interested in authentic Japanese cooking both modern and traditional.

I am bilingual Japanese and English and English is my second language. Food intrigued me since I can remember - my culinary adventure started around age 6-7 when I crossed a path with a young man delivering stacks and stacks of hot noodle dishes on his bike. A crash (entirely my fault for not watching where I was going) and I was covered with noodles. The restaurant owner felt so bad he would deliver free of charge various noodle dishes to our home for for some time. My mother felt so bad I ruined the young man's confidence she made me go help out at the restaurant for several weeks. But my helping out was no more than watching all the fabulous Japanese style noodle being made and tasting them! Started collecting recipes when I was about 16 (I still have all the magazine clippings from those days) and started cooking in earnest at about age 20.

Because of my background, I collect both English language and Japanese language cookbooks and cook everything that catches my fancy. However, my roots are back in Japan and Japanese cooking is what I usually crave when I'm traveling for an extended period away from home or Japan. I make my own tofu and yuba regularly and on occasions (seasonally) make miso, soba (Japanese buckwheat noodle), udon (flour based noodle), and umeshu (ume liqueur).




Peace.

Favorite Foods:

Japanese, especially nigiri zushi - abalone, crab, scallops, hamachi, kampachi, ootoro, uni, clams, regional American ie Cal-Mex/New-Mex/Tex-Mex, Californian, and Creole/Cajun, Italian, French, Mexican, and Korean.

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