Ramen

Ramen is one of those "ultimate comfort foods" for a lot of people. A good ramen should have body in the soup (slightly sticky with collagen and fat), meaty with pork bones, and be always, always accompanied by a soft boiled egg.

Sukiyaki

	A superb, light meal for a warm evening, this Japanese noodle soup is flavourful, low-fat, and filled with vegetables. It's also economical - a tiny amount of meat goes a long way with a dish like this.

Fishball noodle soup with seasoned tofu

I'm never been a massive fan of dashi, to be honest. Give me good old chicken stock or mushroom stock any day. But some Japanese recipes just seem to call for it. This quick and easy recipe makes a low-fat, high protein supper with enough green vegetables thrown in to keep your mom happy. If you're not a big fan of tofu, keep an open mind, as this cooking method floods each cube with oodles of sweet and salty flavour. They're quite moreish!

Okonomiyake

Okonomiyaki is sometimes called the Japanese version of pizza. Presumably by people who've never eaten pizza. Okonomiyaki bears no resemblance to pizza in my mind, but what it is, is a rib-sticking, satisfying, calorific fast food that you can make in a jiffy, using a few staples and whatever's lurking in the back of the fridge. Essentially, it's a savoury pancake, packed with leftover vegetables and any scraps of meat you've got hanging around.

Chicken and eight vegetable stew

This is a great example of my style of cooking: nothing too precise or difficult. Use what you got, bung it all together, tastes great every time. I came across this idea in a cookbook dedicated to western-inspired Japanese food, known as yoshuko. Typical yoshuko dishes would be hambaagaa (a meat patty, grilled and served with soy sauce and grated daikon, as opposed to the western ketchup and pickle), or a pizza topped with white miso instead of tomato sauce.

Japanese pork patties

Sometimes, you just can't beat a parcel of porky-goodness.

(Which unfortunately does rather sound like an inappropriate euphemism. Sorry.)

Anyway, this simple recipe can be pulled together at the drop of a hat from two ingredients and a few cupboard staples.

Mushroom and tofu udon soup

	January can be a cold month: the damp cuts through you. Weather like this calls for something spicy and comforting. Noodle soup to the rescue! This simple, quick recipe uses only a handful of ingredients, but tastes nourishing and warming on a drizzly winter evening. I've adapted this recipe from Kitsune-udon, a recipe from Osaka in Southern Japan.

Golden curry



Japanese canteen food is my ultimate in quick-and-easy comfort eating, and my favourite canteen dish is golden curry (often served over a breaded pork or chicken cutlet and rice, called katsu curry). In the UK, the best-known version of this dish is served at Wagamama. But it's also incredibly easy to make at home, and you don't even need to make the curry sauce from scratch – no one in Japan does!

Miso ramen

This ultra-easy, ultra-tasty Japanese soup noodle can be thrown together at the drop of a hat from a few cupboard staples, and whatever vegetables you have on hand. Dinner in an instant – result!