The backbone of the daily Japanese meal: a bowl of white rice (gohan), a bowl of soup (usually miso), and three side dishes (okazu) — often one main and two small vegetable or fermented accompaniments. Everything arrives at once in separate small bowls, and you pick from one dish to another. It is this modest, comforting table, set under the light of a kitchen, that appears again and again in Yoshimoto's world.

Fermented soybean paste, the umami soul of Japanese home cooking. In Yoshimoto, miso is not just an ingredient: it is the smell of a living kitchen, the gesture that heals. It is always dissolved off the heat to preserve its live cultures.