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APPEARANCES are everything in kaiseki, the formal Japanese multi-course meal-cum-art form that typically lies beyond the repertoire of the average home cook. That's where Takako Fujita - elegantly attired with hocho (cook's knife) poised at a precise angle over a chopping board - might beg to differ.

Over the past 20 years, Ms Fujita has carved a niche for herself as an ambassadress for kaiseki cuisine and by extension traditional Japanese culture. At the Fujita Japanese Cooking School in central Tokyo, she imparts the finer points of cha-do kaiseki - a culinary style with origins deeply rooted in the Japanese tea ceremony - to scores of home cooks wishing to capture the essence of traditional cuisine.

In the complex world of the tea ceremony, the meal is dictated by established sets of rules such as moritsuke - which deals with the way food is arranged on the plate - and actual cooking plays only a small part in the process. While dishes based in, say, street food culture are primarily focused on taste, kaiseki is about aesthetics that elevate the mood, heighten the senses and ultimately feed the soul.

Ms Fujita, whose mission to spread the word about traditional Japanese culture through its cuisine has taken her to various countries, will be demonstrating her "four-seasons" style - emphasising the use of fresh, high-quality, seasonal ingredients - in Singapore next week.

"Traditional Japanese food is popular because it's not just about eating in a healthy way but also about culture, ingredients and presentation, as well as who the meal is being cooked for," says Ms Fujita. "For example, if the dinner guest is elderly we will prepare food accordingly or if it's a foreign guest with different tastes I try to make food that matches."

In the context of her cooking school, Ms Fujita teaches traditional recipes as well as her own creations. Typically, the dishes are delicate and mild-tasting, featuring a variety of textures and fragrances. "I will honour tradition but there are also modern elements that take modern-day circumstances into account," she says.

"Kaiseki is not part of modern society so it's already considered a special-occasion type of food," says the Tokyo-born Ms Fujita, who was a competitive skier in her youth and started her culinary career by learning about the tea ceremony. "Before, when it was only served before the tea ceremony, the way of serving was different, the taste was also different, but the technique is similar." She adds: "If I teach very traditional kaiseki step-by-step style, it is not practical - I modify it a bit so that it can be done at home."

Traditional cuisine is readily available in places like Kyoto, of course, but Ms Fujita stresses that a more casual variation of the form - the kappo-style restaurant - is perhaps more appropriate for modern-day dining. At this time of the year, seasonal dishes might include vegetables such as bamboo shoots (takenoko), rape shoots (nanohana) and broad beans (soramame), while seafood will likely include sea bream (tai).

Her students are typically female, a mix of young housewives, food stylists and "people in training to be good housewives", she jokes. Some have been attending her classes for up to 17 years - longer than they have been married, perhaps.

Each class covers about four or five dishes. Making kaiseki cuisine has been traditionally a male domain but Ms Fujita says her gender hasn't made a difference. "A good kaiseki chef must have sunao (purity of feeling) and be able to convey shun (precisely the season), something that reflects what is going on in nature," she says.

After two decades, Ms Fujita says she is still learning the fine art of kaiseki cuisine. "It's a never-ending process," she says. "And I'm still a housewife in training."

btnews@sph.com.sg

• Takako Fujita will conduct a kaiseki cuisine class on March 22 at 7pm at Chikuyotei Japanese restaurant, #01-01 Intercontinental Hotel, 80 Middle Road. The class ($200 nett/person) includes three dishes and another three types of kaiseki dishes will be served to participants. Japanese wines will also be served. For more information call 6285-1064 or 9725-5311

Yukiwari Shinjyu Owan

(clear soup with fish cake and spring vegetables)

Serves 6

Ingredients

200 gms surimi (fish paste)

540 cc katsuobushi (soup stock made from cured bonto shavings)

1 egg white

6 pieces kinusaya (Japanese pea)

1 yuzu (Japanese citron)

6 pieces scallop

12 pieces tsukushi (shoot of sugina, a mountain plant)

1 piece daikon (Japanese white radish)

Method

1. Wash the scallops with saltwater, keep aside 2-3 pieces, cut the remaining scallops into small cubes. Boil water in a saucepan and add cooking sake, put cubes into the water. Scallops must be half cooked only. Set aside after cooking and keep soup stock.

2. Mash the fishcake, slowly add the soup stock and egg white, then add the remaining scallops and mash together. The mixture should be neither too hard nor too soft. Add the scallop cubes and mix in slowly. Put cling film on a flat surface, wet with water then add mixture and form 6 small fishcake balls. Steam for 12 minutes.

3. Thinly slice the radish, mark each slice a cross at the centre, boil in water until radish is clear. Set aside.

4. Slant cut the peas, boil in saltwater, then put into a bowl of cold water and set aside. Blanch the sugina shoots in vinegar water, then put in a bowl of cold water and set aside.

5. Prepare a soup bowl, put the fishcake ball into the centre, add a slice of thinly-sliced radish on top, place the sugina on the marked cross.

6. Slowly pour the soup stock and add a square-cut slice of yuzu skin on top.