Rie McClenny grew up in southwestern Japan with family members who not only loved to cook but, as the owners of a tearoom and cafe in their small seaside city, were pretty darn good at it.
The simple, home-cooked meals her mother, Yoko, and maternal grandmother, Kiyoko, prepared for their rural customers, using seasonal local ingredients and traditional recipes, were far from fancy. Yet their skillful mix of salty, sweet, sour and bitter — key elements in authentic Japanese cuisine — were rich with umami flavor.
The women were particularly good at making one beloved Japanese comfort food: the ground pork- and cabbage-filled, pan-fried dumplings known as yaki-gyoza.
As McClenny recalls in her first cookbook “Make it Japanese” (Clarkson Potter, $30), they were absolute whizzes at folding dough wrappers around the savory filling to create tasty bundles that were juicy and tender on the inside and crispy, golden-brown on the outside. So good, in fact, that she never felt the urge to learn to make them herself.