Our Story
My Passion
I'd like to share my simple approach to Japanese Home Cooking.
The recipes, techniques, and stories of Japanese cusine that you can bring back home
and replicate or even arrange to your own favourite dishes to enjoy at your table.
I'm also keen to demystify whole misconception that sometimes surrounds Japanese food and culture.
My Story
I'm thrilled to be able to share some simple recepies, authentic flavours of
Japanese dishes with people from around the world.
My name is Masumi, I was born in Osaka, and currently living in Nara, Japan.
Nearly half a century ago, I went to the US through an exchange student program for two years and came back to Japan after graduating high school in California.
I joined my family company in the costume jewelry business, I’ve had a lot of great opportunities visiting Europian countries to get inspired and Asian countries to learn about the general business, manufacturing and trading for 20 years. It had been my precious period of life but I'd decided to step down when I gave birth.
Last 10 years, I traveled to the UK, France and Spain with my son for cultural experience and pleasure. I also started antiquing in the UK, sometimes in France and Belgium while my son joined summer school in the UK, I just love taking trains crossing coutries.
Through these opportunities, I’ve experienced those local cuisine, stalls to fancy restaurants, and home cooked meal where I home-stayed.
I also discovered “Japanese Restaurants” in each countries I visited. Very much impressed to see, in these years, many people enjoy Japanese cusine with SAKE, and using chopsticks effortlessly, finding ONIGIRI and MISO-SOUP in the local supermarket, that was something I was not able to encouter when I once lived in the US or traveled some European countries a few decades ago.
Anyone can cook Japanese dishes at home! My journey of creating and sharing those simple yet authentic, tasty and healthy receipes to people around the world.
How it began
I inherited this property of “The Little Orangery” a few years ago, a house with a backyard in a residential area in the city of Nara, Japan.
And then, there’re various kind of citrus trees, over 20 of them, and an old small green house, as well as some other trees, and overgrown weeds in this backyard.
I had no intention to keep this property. The gardening was never my thing, and growing citrus trees was far beyond my imagination.
But you never know what will change your mind.
Making a long story short, because I want to omit the suffering part.
One morning, I took a walk around this house, I saw those trees bearing lots and lots of citrus - oranges, mandarins and lemons,
even though those trees hadn’t been taken care of, by any hands for many many months.
Between these fresh and colorful fruits and deep green leaves sway in the air, there’re a couple of little birds enjoying one of these oranges, poking in, so lovely.
That was a touching moment, thanks to the blessings of the nature heartily. At the same time, my eureka moment!
The Little Orangery project is an idea I've always had at the back of my mind for so long, probably started when I was an exchange student and meeting people from differetn coutnries, cluture through my business opportunities, and my journey.
A strong gut instinct to creating a convivial place where we could share cultural experience with people from around the world.
And I finally found a way to make it happen with this private house The Little Orangery.
Naming this place
"The Little Orangery"
This place was my father’s dream came true thing. He loved growing citrus trees, cherry trees, orchids and many more in his private time.
I can still see him sitting on the chair in his green house and taking care of his orchids all day on Sundays or showing my little son the varieties of citrus and how to pick them and eat them. It's not what is called a beautiful garden, he had a life with a cane and walker, he concentrated on growing, not creating a garden. But he loved hosting small parties on cherry blossom and citrus harvest seasons, entertaining his guests.
Unfortunately this green house had to be demolished, so I thought of something that could remind us of his favourite green house
was once existed here.
His green house was nothing like a fancy gorgeous ORANGERY that I saw in the UK, but for him, it was a special place.
And we have orange trees growing here as well.
So, I settled naming this place The Little Orangery.
My father and I
We had been a father and a daughter team for a long time.
Been in same family business, traveled a lot together for both business and pleasure.
And he was, as my mum’s figure as well at my younger age.
As he had been a very busy business man, we used to eat out very often. He took me to various dining places/restaurants in local and
cities we visited.
We did eat out a lot, but he always hand-prepared my school lunch every morning, JAPANESE-BENTO.
I recall one of my classmate made always fun of me about my dad’s BENTO, only it didn’t look as fancy as what’s like those mothers made.
I was never ashamed of, always happy and thankful because they tasted so good!
There’re several dining places of our favorites, specially the sushi bar that I still visit in these days, the sushi master is in his 80’s,
he’s known me since I was a baby. He's always served me ‘a special plate’ that’s not on the regular menu.
A lot of people from all around the world come visit his sushi bar these years, I’ve heard many of them say
"Thank you so much. It was the BEST SUSHI I ever had in Japan or anywhere else."
Yes, even for me, always the best sushi I’ve ever had.
This is a miniture model of his sushi-bar-counter. I made this for him, 35 years ago and he still keeps it in the top cabinet.
It may sound strange, but I could say, my father's BENTO and this SUSHI master's are my memory of my home-cooked meal.
And my father's business partners in different countries also took me to reputable local restaurants when I visited them.
These gentlemen're such gourmet. Their love of food are truly respectable.
Thanks to all of them, how my sense of taste has trained well because of you all!
The House
It's rather a western style house, there's no room with 'TATAMI', but a fireplace, many items came from Western countries which mostly my father had collected when he traveled to Europe.
There're not so many "Japanese" in this house except for our family house-temple'BUTSUDAN', several Japanese small furniture that I brought from my late grandmother house, vases and porcelines, Japanese stones in the garden.
Oh, we ask all the guests to take off their shoes to get into this house, which I belive it's so Japanese.
This house was quite big for two of us living, but I recall that my father had a thought of having this size.
As I used to be an exchange students, I home-stayed at three different families in the States. I have also home-stayed in Canada and New Zealand when I was a student.
My father was so grateful to those families having me, welcoming a student from Japan to their home for a long period of time.
In return, he wanted to invite them to home-stay at his house when they visit Japan, and open to anybody who wants to study in Japan or just come visit and stay.
So he thought it would be a good idea to have enough rooms for his plan.
My host families and friends have visited and stayed at his house when they came to Japan. But after a while, we’re too busy in our family business, we didn't have time to have guests in our house and these rooms were left alone for long long time.
My next plan is self-renovating these rooms, and have quest to home-stay again!
Cooking
I grow up watching the several famous cooking shows on Japaense TV, almost everyday.
I used to collect many kinds of cooking books I find in the bookstore, I could chose a different receipes for every meal in my entire life and still won't be able to complete.
I just loved watching the process of cooking and the art of presentation on the plates.
My first cooking for someone besides my family was making TEMPURA dinner for my host families when I lived in the US.
That was a time we couldn't find any Japanese groceries in the local supermarket, fortunately there was a small Chinese grocery stores in the neibourhood, finding some Japanese-ish ingredients, so I somehow managed to prepare Japanese-ish dinner for them.
But as I mentioned ealier, when I joined my family business, I was happyly stuck in this business, I was often away for business trips, eating out most of the time, actually I didn't have to cook.
Besides enjoy eating out, I gained some usuful techniques by watching those professional Japanese cheffs performing efficent skills and presentation.
These particular cheffs, Japanese restaurants with the open kitchen by the bar table.
I watched the chefs preparing the dishes, fillet and slice the fishes with the sharp YANAGIBA knife, scoop sushi-rice and efficiently shape or roll it. I watched them grill, steam, braise, fry and beautifully arrange on fancy plates and serve.
Impressed with their master’s touch every time I see them.
I have an episode. I happened to join this short-course French cooking class at the French culinary school without knowing this was for semi-professional. I took this course only because I wanted to cook some fancy French dishes for my husband.
First day, we had to fillet a fish. It was a fish about 30cm long, more than that, the knife was even longer than the fish. I have never fillet a fish before, but I had a strong feeling that I cannot say 'I can’t do it' to my teacher. So what I did was, imagine the above mentioned master chef, and how he moved the knife and his handiwork, I’ve seen enough to recall and copy his move, and with a luck, I just did it.
The chef teacher said, ‘Well done. You must have done this so many times already.”
I could not confess that it was my very first time, 'not done it but seen it so many times.'
Back to the story.
I myself have taken Japanese home cooking classes, attend to workshops and taking lessons when I visited other countries, wine and chees in France, vegeterian cooking in UK, I even visted a Tuna-farm in Spain and tasted MAGUROnoSASHIMI.
Reserch and study - both in food, techniques and it's background cluture has been always my passion.
And most of all, my cooking for my family table.
Benefit from all these experience to conduct hands-on cooking classes, sharing authentic but simple techniques in an approachable way for you to bring back home.