タグ: ENG_Food

“Piglet” Lottie Hazell (2024) Review | Will you break the perfect life?

★★★★★ Your fiancé tells you he has betrayed you. 2 weeks to your wedding, will you break the perfect life you have created, or will you cling to it? A woman struggling with the expectation of others and her own. Girl, we hear you.


Piglet
Lottie Hazell 2024
Read in 2025.7
check price on amazon.com

✔ Female rage
✔ Life in London as a young woman with career 
✔ Food


🔽 Book review and notes 🔽
A book about female rage. About trying too hard and about creating life based on others. And eating.
It's a story of a woman who is about to get married, so the tension is at its peak when he confesses his betrayal, what now? 
The need to show you're up to their expectations, because you carefully fabricated that image. And godforbid she lives the life of her own lower class family. It's all represented in the food and eating.
Look at me buying good stuff from waitrose. Look at me cooking and baking fancy stuff.
Very real, it's what womanhood is today.

🔽 Where to buy / Summary and more info 🔽

●●● Amazon.com (US) ●●●

Piglet: A Novel

●●● Amazon.co.uk (UK) ●●●

Piglet: ‘If I owned a bookstore, I’d hand-sell Piglet to everyone’ New York Times Book Review

●●● Amazon.it (Italy) ●●●
Piglet: ‘If I owned a bookstore, I’d hand-sell Piglet to everyone’ New York Times Book Review (English)

2026-03-04

“Cod A biography of the fish that changed the world” Mark Kurlansky (1997) Review | Our ugly selves exposed by, cod

🔽 log 🔽
Cod: A Biography of the Fish that Changed the World
Mark Kurlansky, 1997
Read in 2025.03
check price on amazon.com

✔ World history and wars around cod
✔ Exciting and revealing, unknown history
✔ Some recipe at the end

🔽 Review summary 🔽

★★★★★ Nobody had imagined that one day, cod would reduce in number and lead us to wars. We had to expose our ugly selves, all because of, yes, cod.

🔽 Book review and notes 🔽
Being a Japanese person, cod is not something I understood fully.
It's the fish and chips, northern Europe seem to fish a lot, and in southern Europe they eat dried fish as specialty.
And yet that IS the history, Spanish eat a lot of cods that they don't have nearby, why. And as always things are so exaggerated with the modern technology that the cod, which thought to be forever plentiful, is decreasing in number and wars occur, and xenophobia will triumph because it's always someone else's fault that there's less fish.
Funny yet totally understandable that the most of the Atlantic world eat non-fresh cod, because that's how it fed the mass, and they last long.
Expensive bits to the rich, and cheap versions to the slaves in the West Indies' slaves.

It's written in 1997, today it's more commonly known that the most environmentally harmful act is the trawling, scooping up everything from the bottom of the sea.
It also leaves the plastic rubbish which we should actually focus more, than plastic straws.
Fishermen are not the enemy, the big corporations are, as always.

🔽 Where to buy / Summary and info 🔽

●●● Amazon.com (US) ●●●

Cod: A Biography of the Fish that Changed the World Paperback

Amazon.co.uk (UK)

Cod Paperback

Amazon.it (Italy)

Cod Paperback (Inglese)


Merluzzo. Storia del pesce che ha cambiato il mondo Paperback

2026-03-01

“Sushi & beyond” Michael Booth (2009) Review | He’s British, he’s composed

Sushi & Beyond: What the Japanese Know About Cooking
Michael Booth, 2009
307 pages
Read in 2024.4
check price on amazon.com

✔ English journalist tavels to Japan with family
✔ His discovery of Japanese food, often unusual 
✔ Insightful, travelling before the current Japan boom


🔽 Review summary 🔽

★★★★☆ A great and fun book. It's also nice that although very obviously he fell in love with the food, he's not religiously admiring everything. He's British, he's composed.


🔽 Book review and notes 🔽

A great and fun book for foodies who are into Japanese food.

Of course as a Japanese, it's not like I didn't know these things but I didn't know them that deeply with all the facts, because, an average Japanese cannot have access to many things.

He travels around Japan with his wife and 2 small boys, though he'd spend a lot of time working, it is true that kids are passports to kindness from locals. So it's both travel journal and food journal.

It's also nice that although very obviously he fell in love with the food, he's not religiously admiring everything. Or too geeky or too disgusted. 
He knows he had access to special places and with privileges but he's curious to know, see eat everything, what can he do? He went for it and sharing the story here.

🔽 Where to buy 🔽

●●● Amazon.com (US) ●●●

Sushi and Beyond: What the Japanese Know About Cooking

●●● Amazon.co.uk (UK) ●●●
Sushi and Beyond: What the Japanese Know About Cooking

●●● Amazon.it (Italy) ●●●
Sushi and Beyond: What the Japanese Know About Cooking (English)

2026-02-21

“Kitchen Confidential” Anthony Bourdain (2000) Review | Love of cooking

Kitchen Confidential
Anthony Bourdain, 2000
576 pages
Read in 2024.09
check price on amazon.com


✔ Autobiography by a popular chef
✔ His life and relationship with food and cooking 
✔ Funny and heart warming


🔽 Review summary 🔽

★★★★★  It's a biography but not about him, it's about the love of food, love of cooking, of his colleagues and kitchen. It's really how he was, foul mouth, brutally honest, caring guy. A classic.


🔽 Book review and notes 🔽
Yes, no wonder this is considered a classic.

It's a biography but it's not about him, it's about the love of food, love of cooking, of his colleagues and kitchen, and as he says, it's universal.

Kitchen is a heated place, I have worked briefly at a small restaurant so I had a tiny preview of the kitchen life.
It's a difficult job and it's all about working as a team, not a team, a military. 
What your chef says is absolute, you only say "yes chef".

Bourdain was such a loved character from TV shows, and it's nice to read that it's really how he was, foul mouth, brutally honest, caring guy.

Funny he mentions Orwell's Down and Out in Paris and London, that I recently ready.
And this books is only second to that classic.

🔽 Where to buy 🔽

●●● Amazon.com (US) ●●●

Kitchen Confidential Updated Edition: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly (P.S.) 

●●● Amazon.co.uk (UK) ●●●
Kitchen Confidential: 25th Anniversary Edition

●●● Amazon.it (Italy) ●●●
Kitchen Confidential (Italiano)

2026-02-10

“My dining hell” Jay Rayner (2012) Review | Honest but brutal reviews
My dining hell
Twenty ways to have a lousy night out
By Jay Rayner, 2012
76 pages
Read 2023.01
check price on amazon.com

✔ Brutal restaurant reviews
✔ Food culture in London and UK
✔ A popular food critic

🔽 Review summary 🔽

★★★★☆ He’s probably the most well known food critic in the UK, and definitely known for being brutally honest. This is a collection of bad reviews only. Honest and mean, but honest.

🔽 Book review and notes 🔽

He’s probably the most well known food critic in the UK, and definitely known for being brutally honest.
These are some of the reviews he’s put on the Observer, but of bad restaurants; you know it’s going to be a good one.

So yes he’s known to be merciless, but after reading these reviews in this way, it just makes think, yes London is full of bad restaurants.
Not just bad food, but also bad at doing restaurants.
I don’t know which is worse, bad food or bad restaurant, usually both come together though.

The reviews are from between 1999 and 2012, probably the worst period, too.
But has London got better?
Is it really worth all the money you’d have to spend?
And to give posh restaurants some space, kicking out the more simple and honest restaurants out of town?

I love London for the mix of food, but seriously, it shouldn’t have become a fast food theme park of expensive food.
I hope this phase ends some time soon.
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🔽 Where to buy / Summary and more info 🔽

●●● Amazon.com (US) ●●●

My Dining Hell: Twenty Ways To Have a Lousy Night Out (Penguin Specials)

●●● Amazon.co.uk (UK) ●●●
My Dining Hell: Twenty Ways To Have a Lousy Night Out (Penguin Specials)

●●● Amazon.it (Italy) ●●●
My Dining Hell: Twenty Ways To Have a Lousy Night Out (Penguin Specials) (English Edition) 
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2026-02-04
“BUTTER” Asako Yuzuki (2017) Review | Her life her food her body
Butter
Asako Yuzuki, 2017
柚木麻子
Read in 2025.11
check price on amazon.com

✔ Feminist crime story based on a real case
✔ Power struggle between two women
✔ Relationship with her body and her food

🔽 Review summary 🔽

★★★★★ For a woman to eat oily food, gain a few kilo and have a fun life is a shameful thing. She must give up a lot, including her sanity, to go beyond. Then, there is a place where she can eat what she wants, a life of rich and luxurious butter.

🔽 Book review and notes 🔽

Finally read Butter, the book everyone is talking about, in Japan, in the UK and beyond.

The power of Kajimana is the core, a pale chubby middle aged woman with an undeniable attraction, who is a suspect of murdering her lovers – she hates two things, margarine and feminist.
The book is about the power struggle between the two women; Kajimana and Rika a journalist.
Well actually no, it is always Kajimana who has the control over everything Rika does, including when she sleeps with her boyfriend and what she should eat afterwards when and where, as if her pale chubby arms is grabbing the life of Rika.
It’s a struggle to escape the chubby arm of control.

It’s a bestseller worldwide, but this is very Japan.
You’d enjoy it more if you know how horrible Japanese society is to women, even today (and if you know how expensive butter is there)
It’s a very normal thing to criticise or joke about the weight of a woman in public, and a woman is expected to worry about her appearance constantly and forever.
For a woman to eat oily food, gain a few kilo, have a fun life is a shameful thing. God forbit.
So especially in Japan, for a woman, to have a good life for herself requires more energy.
You must give up a lot, including your sanity, in order to get there.
But as you get there, there is a place where you can eat what you want, a life of rich and luxurious butter.

This book is not merely a feminist book, that’d be an easy observation.
As women become free from the society’s cruel and unrealistic expectations, men are also freed from the unreasonable expectation of manliness.

The novel is based on a real life crime in Japan, but before you know it it becomes less about the crime and the mystery but more about you and me and the society we live in.
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🔽 Where to buy / Summary and more info 🔽

●●● Amazon.com (US) ●●●

Butter: The Cult Japanese Bestseller about a Serial Killer Cook (Food and Murder) 

●●● Amazon.co.uk (UK) ●●●
Butter: THE No. 1 SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLING SENSATION

●●● Amazon.it (Italy) ●●●
Butter (italiano)
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2026-01-23
“Sweet Bean Paste” Durien Sukegawa (2015) Review | sweetness of life

Sweet Bean Paste
Durien Sukegawa, 2015
あん
ドリアン助川
Read in 2025.12
check price on amazon.com

✔ Feel good Japanese literature
✔ Elderly woman living with social injustice
✔ Meaning of life

🔽 Review summary 🔽

★★★★★ It’s often said that being useful for others is the meaning of life, but maybe, the meaning of life, the meaning itself, is simply to feel “ah this is good”. The happiness that the humble sweet beans can bring will give you that feeling.

🔽 Book review and notes 🔽

It’s so warm, like a hug, you feel the warmth that’s probably happiness.

It’s often said that being useful for others is the meaning of life, but I’m not sure, isn’t it more like a feeling of significance living in a society, and that’s a great thing.
But maybe, the meaning of life, the meaning itself, is simply to feel “ah this is good”

Here the main characters had all suffered, and they met, and they shared the same sweet beans.
Tokue suffered from leprosy the disease, and after recovering, she suffered from the society’s prejudice and ignorance.
I myself also didn’t know that there were facilities until the 90s in Japan, and that is the horror of ignorance and I’m part of it.

By chance, I made my first sweet beans last year, and I also made dorayaki several times after that.
I found a “quick and easy recipe” online, “quick” but you’d still need to soak the beans from the night before and cook for several hours.
I’d love writing about my first delicious, slightly hard, sweet beans I made all day here, but I instead I tell you the feeling was definitely the happiness.
The happiness that the humble sweet beans can bring, something that takes hours to make but needs 2 seconds to eat, to say, ah this is good.

🔽 Where to buy / Summary and more info 🔽

●●● Amazon.com (US) ●●●

Sweet Bean Paste: The International Bestseller

●●● Amazon.co.uk (UK) ●●●
Sweet Bean Paste: The International Bestseller

●●● Amazon.it (Italy) ●●●
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2026-01-21