An Autumn Afternoon Tea with Emiko Davies

What a joyous afternoon we had together with author Emiko Davies celebrating her revelatory book The Japanese Pantry. Emiko is an Australian-Japanese food writer and cookbook author, based in Tuscany for the past 20 years, where she teaches cooking classes and culinary workshops with her husband, sommelier Marco Lami. In the spring of 2023, they opened Enoteca Marilu, a natural wine bar and space for hosting cooking classes and food and wine workshops in San Miniato, between Florence and Pisa.

Being that Emiko is currently in Austraila for an extended time I was thrilled to collaborate together. Emiko and I first met at the first Food and Words Writers Festival hosted by Barbara Sweeney back in 2012 and since then Emiko has flourished in her writing with seven magnificent cookbooks to her name. 

It was a full house, an afternoon tea table laden with Japanese homestyle cooking, a gorgeous group of guests and buckets of laughter. This Emiko’s seventh cookbook, is focused on Japanese pantry staples, to inspire people to make the most of these powerful pantry ingredients; soy sauce, miso, rice vinegar, seaweed, sake, sesame and tea and feel confident in recreating Japanese flavours at home. Recipes that are inherently simple and full of flavour. The afternoon tea featured Miso pickles, Gohei mochi (grilled rice balls with a walnut miso sauce), Walnut & Miso cookies, Ricotta & sake lees Cheescake and Hojicha Cream Sponge Roll.