Hiroko Shimbo, Leading Expert On Japanese Cooking, Selects Watershed Communications To Launch Upcoming Book

Hiroko Shimbo, authority on Japanese cuisine, has engaged Watershed Communications as the agency of record to guide publicity around the launch of her third cookbook, Hiroko's American Kitchen: Cooking with Japanese Flavors, to be published by Andrews McMeel in Fall 2012.

Watershed is a national brand strategy and communications firm based in Portland, Oregon, with an office in Brooklyn, New York, and is known for an expertise in food and drink, with deep knowledge culinary traditions and technique.

Based in New York City since 1999, Shimbo teaches classes on Japanese cuisine to professionals and consumers and is a sought-after speaker at events such as The Culinary Institute of America's Worlds of Flavor conference. Shimbo also consults with major culinary brands such as appliance-maker Zojirushi America, AVI Foodsystems and is currently the consulting chef on a new quick-service hand-roll sushi restaurant, ICONIC, in New York's East Village. Her first two award-winning books, The Japanese Kitchen (Harvard Common Press, 2000) and The Sushi Experience (Knopf, 2006) continue to attract professional chefs and home cooks.

Hiroko's American Kitchen: Cooking with Japanese Flavors, inverts the usual approach to international cooking - instead of teaching Americans how to cook authentic Japanese food, it shows how to integrate Japanese flavors into American cooking. Shimbo has eliminated hard to find, exotic Japanese ingredients and instead focuses on easily available key Japanese staples that can be found in grocery stores across the country. "I want to stress that these are not 'fusion' recipes," explains Shimbo. "Rather, they represent Japanese cuisine extended to the American kitchen."

The premise of the book is as follows: Six handy mother sauces or stocks that can be prepared in quantity, in advance, and stored for easy and quick use. They are the key tools for preparing the 125 recipes.

"We're excited by Shimbo's innovative concept for the book," says Watershed founder and principal Lisa Donoughe. "It's right in line with our approach to editorial storytelling: skip over the obvious storylines and look for the unconventional idea that will pop and connect with the reader because it fills a true need."

With offices on both coasts, Watershed is an award-winning agency that specializes in promoting both established national brands and growing regional businesses. With a deep expertise in food and beverage, and unparalleled relationships with key media, the firm has a history of success in helping thought-leaders tell their stories. It's that mission that in 2009 earned founder Donoughe the Portland PRSA chapter's Lifetime Achievement Award for her work helping to put Portland on the map as a thriving culinary destination.

Hiroko Shimbo joins the Oregon Brewers Guild, Virtue Cider, Montinore Estate, Smith Teamaker, Top Hops Beer Shop, Nostrana and others in the agency's dynamic food and beverage portfolio.

For more information about Watershed's services or client list, please visit www.watershedcom.com.

# # #

Watershed's mission is to honestly communicate about and add value to the great brands of our generation in order to preserve businesses that enrich our culture. We aim to help each other grow as professionals and as people, to learn something new each day and to do good while doing good work.