About Me

I am Kana, a Japanese cooking enthusiast living in the Netherlands

I was born and raised in Japan. I started to learn cooking when I was 12 years old to help my mother.

As my mother was working at that time, and sometimes she came home late, I helped her to prepare for dinner. Especially because of my younger brother, who was often so hungry after school.

Living abroad during my academic life

When I was 19, I studied at an university in the UK. I shared a kitchen with 5 other international students in a flat. We sometimes made dishes from our own countries to exchange. I cooked tempura with ingredients that I could get at the local supermarket, such as shrimp, avocado, and onion. Avocado in this case was not an authentic ingredients for traditional tempura, but it was so good! This experience taught me that I don’t have to stick to the tradition.

Exploring continues in Europe

I have been living in Italy and Germany for my professional reasons. I met my husband in 2015 in Italy, and In 2017, I decided to move to the Netherlands which is my husband’s home country. Netherlands is the extremely international in terms of population. Thanks to that, it’s not very difficult to buy various international ingredients at a local supermarket, including Japanese food. Although there is an Asian supermarkets in big cities like Amsterdam, but I try to buy as many ingredients as possible at a nearest supermarket.

My husband is enthusiastic about “eating” Japanese food. He is a huge fun of Japanese kitchen. I try to cook Japanese dinner as often as possible.

Note: the recipes that I present on this website are taught by my parents, grand-parents and friends, as well as that I learned from recipe books / websites. I often simplify them, so you can get the ingredients easily and cook the dishes in simple steps.