My partner surprised me with a Yuto Omura's Japanese cuisine cookbook. I've been trying his recipes from his site (https://sudachirecipes.com/) and YT channel for about a year now. Every single recipe of his I tried has been an absolute slam dunk, sometimes helping me solve a particular recipe I've been trying to dial in for years (or decades). "Hm, sure, I'll get around to buying his cookbook at some point."
Oh, wow, I wish I'd gotten this book sooner.
There are elucidating primers and explanations, beautiful photographs, and just enough text to get you to your destination. The book + site + YT channel are force multipliers for each other. Even though I was using his website a lot, there are some recipe refinements in the book as he found tweaks and improvements. Yamitsuki (https://sudachirecipes.com/izakaya-salted-cabbage/), for example, has some tweaks in the book that I would have never imagined on my own.
And if you've never made yamitsuki, do yourself a huge favor. The website version of the recipe has been my most requested side ever. That shit gets mowed. down. Every time. Omura isn't kidding when he calls it addictive.
In addition to the great content, this is one of the best designed cookbooks I own: lay flat binding, two bookmark ribbons, a serious index (rather than an afterthought jammed into as few pages as possible), and a matte finish on the pages so that your fingerprints don't muck up the images. A lot of thought went into making a cookbook that people would want to use.
Edit: two words.
Wow it makes me so happy that others recognize the value of two bookmark ribbons. You often want to make a side and a main, or the recipe points you to another page. Paper bookmarks just fall out.
How exotic are the ingredients? I imagine I might have trouble sourcing them.
I think it all comes down to... well, everything. My sailboat has been off the coast of a small city (~6000 people) on the Washington Olympic Peninsula for a few years now. I can go ashore any time, I have a cargo bike and a motor vehicle. Plus I can just pick up and sail to, say, Seattle. I can usually find what I need here in town. I don't use Amazon, and I try to avoid delivery services when possible. In my experience, the hardest ingredients to find locally are almost always shelf-stable. So I will have a friend in Portland OR or Seattle WA pick up a bunch of things for me at one of the huge Asian groceries, package that up, and mail it to me. If it's perishable, like fresh noodles, I'll arrange all a long day of restocking, then go all over the place to get things I need.
On Omura's website, he usually discusses reasonable substitutions and omissions in pretty good detail. This is an example of my comment about how the site and book are complementary. He even has a whole page on his site dedicated to alternatives and "don't try to swap [Y] for [X]." https://sudachirecipes.com/japanese-ingredient-substitutes/
Forks, Clallam Bay, or Joyce?
Upon reflection, maybe Sekiu? Port Angeles and Port Townsend are too big.
Yes to all, actually, except Forks. Not much ocean in Forks. :D We move around based on weather/Banana Belt, where friends are in town, and any other factors that strike our interest.
Whoa you are living on a sailboat? Thats awesome! Thanks for the info. Ill try some from the website.