Maori Murota grew up in Tokyo, then New York and on to Paris where she re-trained as a chef. Initially cooking classical French food, during the pandemic she was drawn to cook the food she grew up eating. One such recipe is the delicious miso eggplant spaghetti dish her mum used to make. The relative simplicity of preparation, as in all these dishes, belies the complexity of flavour.

Felicity O’Driscoll of Cook the Books picks her all-time favourite Japanese cookbooks.
Visit the shop at 78 Kelmarna Ave, Ponsonby, Auckland or go to cookthebooks.co.nz