Simple, good-tasting food Nagi Maehashi’s recipe for publishing success

The need to eat as a poor accounting trainee convinced Nagi Maehashi to try to make her own nutritious food – and has propelled her into publishing history.

Nagi Maehashi, who published RecipeTin Eats: Dinner. Picture: Rob Palmer

“I was so lazy as a kid, I don’t think I even did the dishes,” says Sydney home cook and dog-lover, Nagi Maehashi, with a grin. “When I moved out of home at 18, I couldn’t afford to eat, so I had to learn how to cook.”

From this humble start, Maehashi has propelled herself into publishing history.

RecipeTin Eats: Dinner by Nagi Maehashi.

Her debut cookbook, RecipeTin Eats: Dinner, broke BookScan records for the fastest-selling cookbook since records began when it was released in October. With more than 37,000 copies sold in its first week, it also broke the record for the highest-selling title from a debut Australian author. With more than 71,000 copies sold so far this year, and Christmas still ahead of us, it seems certain to finish as one of the best-selling books of the year.

What explains this success?

“The food tastes good, It’s not fussy. Anyone can do it,” she says.

Maehashi’s family migrated from Japan when she was three, and “there were no Japanese restaurants like there are today”.

“Nobody knew what bento boxes were. We were catching our own fish to make sushi.”

That said, she did not learn about taste and flavour at her mother’s elbow, saying it was the need to eat as a poor accounting trainee that convinced her to try to make her own nutritious food.

Over time, friends would taste her simple meals, and swoon.

She quit corporate life in 2014, to see if she could make a go of a home-cook website.

“I approached it as a business,” she said. “This was going to be my full- time job. I decided my No.1 focus would be taste. Some websites are focused on beautiful food, but food is often not beautiful. It is brown and yellow sauces, gravies, and ragu.”

Maehashi really is the cook – she doesn’t claim to be a chef – ­behind the recipes, meaning she made the 150 meals in her cookbook, and photographed all but two of them.

Nagi Maehashi wither taste-tester, Dozer the golden retriever. Picture: Rob Palmer

Her taste-tester is Dozer the golden retriever, who is adored by her social media followers. She isn’t fussy: her chicken with mustard sauce is chicken, cream, and mustard. Maybe some tarragon if it’s not too much trouble to find some.

“I shop where everyone shops. No gourmet shops: Coles, Aldi, Woollies,” she says.

Her book is called RecipeTin because she used to keep her “success-story” recipes in an old tin in her kitchen, much like your Mum used to do, probably.

A publisher convinced her to release them as a book, and it’s run off the shelves.

“I think it’s because there is a relatability there. I am very much any ordinary person,” she says. She doesn’t feel like a celebrity ­author. “Not at all, and especially not when I’m up to my armpits in dishes, just never.”