Sachie's Kitchen

While Japan is a truly modern country it is also rich in history and tradition. In this episode Sachie meets some Japanese artisans carrying on very old traditions closely tied to Japan's food culture.

Miso paste dates back more than a thousand years and has become a key ingredient in Japanese cuisine. Sachie travels to Nagano, the home of Marukome (the world's leading manufacturer of miso) where she gets to see how it's made and then to a place in the hills where the miso is left to ferment and mature.

Salmon is rapidly becoming one of the staple fish in the Japanese diet and New Zealand King salmon is one of the most prized varieties. To find out what makes New Zealand salmon so special Sachie journeys to a salmon hatchery and then to a salmon farm in the beautiful Marlborough Sounds.

Sachie visits Kyoto - from geishas to temples to fine crafts it's the centre of Japanese culture, and its food is no exception.

Soy sauce is one of the main condiments in Japanese cooking so Sachie journeys to Chiba, the home of Yamasa Soy Sauce to see how it's made. Yamasa has been making soy sauce for more than 350 years but they've got a new concoction which is totally 21st century - soy ice cream.

Sachie and her family go foraging in the hills for bamboo shoots and other special vegetables for a Japanese style barbecue.

Japanese people are constantly on the move and to match this hectic lifestyle they've refined some special kinds of fast food; from thirty second udon noodles to the elegant bento boxes containing up to fifty different Japanese delicacies.

Sachie goes on an international rice journey from planting seedlings in a paddy field in Japan to harvesting full grown rice stalks in Northern California and then following the rice as it's processed in a factory.

Noodles are one of Japan's most popular meals, so popular that the people voted instant noodles their most important invention of the 20th century. Sachie visits a living museum dedicated to ramen noodles and gets to see the master noodle chefs at work - then back in her kitchen she makes a soy based soup using spaghetti instead of noodles and a miso based noodle soup.

The variety of food sold from roadside stalls is amazing in Japan and nowhere is it more evident than Osaka, the city with the food motto "eat till you drop". From octopus balls to dumplings to the local specialty - a kind of thick fritter called okonomiyaki - Sachie does eat till she drops.

Sachie goes to the largest fish market in the world - Tsukiji Market in Tokyo - where more than two hundred different types of fish are sold. The high point is the famous tuna auction where tuna from all over the world are sold for sashimi. Back in her kitchen Sachie prepares tuna tataki, sugar and spice salmon and stuffed squid.