July 13th, 2026Yoko wins James Beard award for cookbook
Malmsbury local and CFA Malmsbury Fire Brigade member Yoko Nakazawa has just won a James Beard Award for her cookbook The Japanese Art of Pickling & Fermenting.
Yoko first joined the CFA two years ago and has become a valued member and already attended many callouts.
She also runs cooking and fermentation workshops in the Malmsbury Town Hall and attends markets at Woodend, Castlemaine and Coburg.
In The Japanese Art of Pickling & Fermenting preserving expert Yoko Nakazawa shares her lifelong passion of pickling and fermenting ingredients using age-old techniques that have been passed down the generations.
Yoko grew up in rural Japan and helped her parents preserve the glut of their vegetable patch every season.
Her mother taught her how to preserve food using ancient Japanese fermenting techniques to make amazuzuke (sweet vinegar pickles), asazuke (quick pickles), kasa zuke (sake lees pickles), misozuke (miso pickles) and nukazuke (rice bran pickles).
When she moved to Australia, Yoko started to grow and preserve her own vegetables and became inspired to share her knowledge and recipes for pickling and fermenting all kinds of produce, including daikon, cucumber, cabbage, carrot, onion, garlic, ginger, umeboshi, even eggs and chrysanthemum leaves.
In her book Yoko explains the difference between these pickles and ferments, and guides us through the preserving process, from salt ratios and chopping techniques to fermenting times and storage.
Along the way, she shares personal stories from her childhood and experiences growing and fermenting vegetables in Australia, making this volume not only a practical guide filled with valuable knowledge, but also a book filled with love.
Often described as the “Oscars of the food world”, the James Beard Awards are among the most prestigious honours in food publishing and media globally.
Not only did Yoko take home the award, her book was also a finalist in the Visual category, placing it among the very best food books published in the United States.
Words: Donna Kelly | Image: © Melanie Aldridge
