Ozoni — Japanese mochi soup — is soothing and sustaining, a grounding meal for the first day of the new year.

Spicy black bean soup, French onion white bean soup, Italian wedding soup with turkey meatballs — the options are endless (and delicious).

When Sonoko Sakai’s mother snuck a little miso into her lasagna, she wasn’t thinking of the kind of Japanese fusion that became an American dining craze in the 1980s. Rather, she was doing what ...