A recipe book published by Natsunori Usuko reveals her surprising “cooking skills.

I made the food while drinking.

We wanted to publish a recipe book. We also wanted to cook on our own YouTube channel, because we had the intention of doing a recipe book at …… if it turned out well. It turned out to be …… (laughs).”

It is not easy to publish a recipe book, unless you are a cookbook author. In such a situation, Usuyuki (32) of the comedy duo “Nagon” has published “Nagon Sachi’s Yakeyamo Yummy Recipes Tonight” (Tatsumi Publishing Co., Ltd.).

Sachi has a strong image as a “lazy” comedian who is tongue-in-cheek in his material, professes his love of alcohol in private, and smokes cigarettes in his spare time. In fact, however, Sachi also has a side that allows her to make snacks to accompany alcoholic beverages in a jiffy. In this recipe book, Sachi shares stories of her family and fellow comedians, along with “easy but not too hard-to-follow recipes.

The dishes in the book were photographed at Sachi’s home. She made all the dishes in her own familiar kitchen, without the help of a food coordinator.

The dishes in the photos took two days to make,” says Sachi. I asked the staff to help me with the serving dishes. From morning to evening, on the first day, I drank more than a dozen alcoholic beverages (he doesn’t seem to remember the exact number of drinks!). We made the dishes from morning to evening. By the end of the day, I was very drunk.

The reason I look a little erotic in the pictures used in the book is because I was so drunk that my eyes were glazed over. It gives me a married woman feel (laughs). As per the concept of the book, the recipes in the latter half of the book are based on the idea that you can make them while drinking. When I’m sober, I tend to be very careful, but when I’m drinking, I feel like I can make it quickly and easily.

Episodes that are not “carefree” episodes

Sachi’s first encounter with cooking was when she started living alone. At the time, she says, she had no choice but to cook.

I started living alone when I was about 18 years old. I didn’t have any money, so convenience stores were expensive, but I had an appetite, so I had to cook for myself to fill my stomach. I started cooking to save money.

Gradually, however, he began to like cooking for himself.

I was never afraid of cooking. I think it was because I watched my mother, who was an excellent cook. But I think the big thing was my experience at a restaurant where I worked part-time since I was a student. I learned how to cook by making bribes there.

However, he still cooks in his own way. He is far from a brilliant knife-handler. I can’t cut cabbage into thin strips quickly and easily, and I’m not very good at handling fish because I’m clumsy,” he says.

When I was working part-time at a major izakaya (Japanese-style pub) chain, I was expected to be a good cook, so I was put in the kitchen. One day, I was asked to handle a horse mackerel that had been taken out of the fish tank, but I couldn’t take a live fish down, so I gently put it back in the tank.

Yes, it was swimming fine (laughs). (laughs) But he was furious with me. I didn’t have the skill, but actually I had been feeling sorry for the horse mackerel for a while, and I had been feeding it secretly after the store closed, so I had become emotionally attached to it. ……

Sachi is a little different from the “lazy” character.

She said, “I want my future husband to be a man with a stupid tongue.”

When she started living on her own and began cooking for herself, “I would send pictures to my mother saying, ‘I made this! and I would send a picture of it to my mother and she would reply, ‘That’s great! and she would reply, ‘ That’s great! When she returns home, she says, “I’ll cook today! This was probably because she realized the time and effort her mother had put into cooking after being away from home, and she wanted to show her mother that she, too, had become a skilled cook. This is an example of the warm and tender relationship between Sachi and her family.

Sachi’s mother would use leftover sake when they ran out of cooking sake. I also liked to eat the salted squid and other snacks that my father used to have with sake. In such a family, I became a firm lover of sake who loves cooking as a matter of course (laughs).”

One of the dishes Sachi served to her family is the “unwrapped zuboraki yakisai,” which is also featured in this book.

In this dish, the yaki-sai batter is cooked in a frying pan in a circular shape, and then the torn yaki-sai skin is sprinkled on top of the batter. It may seem a bit sloppy without wrapping, but it is a reasonable dish.

He is not a man of many words, but he said, “This ‘no-wrapping zubolaki’ is delicious!　Delicious! I was very happy that he ate it. After I became a comedian, my brother, who appeared on a cooking show with me, was asked what was the best dish I made, and he didn’t know the name of it. After thinking about it for a while, he came up with the answer “quiche” from …… (laughs). It’s a dish without a name that I don’t even know what to call it, but quiche is …….”

He was embarrassed, but he added a laugh, as one would expect from a successful comedian.

As with the “no-wrapping-never-wrapping-quiche,” the recipes in this book are easy to make, require few steps, and can be made with ingredients and seasonings that are already in the house without the need to buy new ones.

There is no such thing as a “fancy party dish. I want people to make it with what they have left over, without being overbearing. I want people who have just started living on their own to use my recipes as a reference.

What does cooking mean to Sachi?

Cooking for me probably changes from time to time. Right now, I enjoy cooking by adding seasonings as I please, and I am happy if people think it tastes good. But in the future, when I get married or something, I might think, ‘I’ll cook more fancy and dressed-up dishes to show my husband! I might think, “I’m going to dress up more for my husband. It might change again when I have children. When I become a grandmother, I think I will change there, too.

In this day and age, she chooses her words carefully, but a hint of her maidenly happiness peeks through her face. It seems as if her character has already collapsed. ……

Marriage?　I have no plans to get married yet (laughs). But I don’t want a husband who cooks for himself. I don’t want a husband who cooks for himself, because he seems to know what he’s doing, has a discerning palate, and is a nag. A man with a stupid tongue would be better (laughs).

It seems that her “laziness” is still alive and well.

Nagon Sachi’s Tonight’s Delicious Recipes” (written by Usuyuki, published by Tatsumi Shuppan)