Centuries of fusion predate the marriage of ingredients in this Japanese Italian Wedding Soup When Sonoko Sakai’s mother snuck a little miso into her lasagna, she wasn’t thinking of the kind of Japanese fusion that became an American dining craze in the 1980s.
Wafu literally means “Japanese in style.” That could mean blending Western and Japanese flavors or even adjusting a dish’s presentation or sensibility to Japanese tastes.
Each dish was adapted to be more, well, Japanese, said Sakai, a Japanese-American cooking instructor who explores this combination of influences in her new book, “Wafu Cooking.”.
Tonkatsu, a fried pork cutlet, came from French chefs cooking in the imperial court after Japan opened to the West during the Meiji period of the late 1800s.
The dish also comes with shredded cabbage to balance its richness, and with tonkatsu sauce, itself an international mashup that includes soy sauce, Worcestershire and tomato.
