Debra Samuels, cookbook author, food and travel writer, and cooking teacher, has worked with children and families for over twenty-five years. She is a regular contributor to The Boston Globe, and she co-authored The Korean Table (Tuttle Publishing, 2008) with Taekyung Chung. My Japanese Table: A Lifetime of Cooking with Friends and Family, was published by Tuttle in 2011.

Samuels has taught the Japanese about American cuisine, Americans how to roll sushi, and teachers how to put together a Japanese obento lunch. She worked at Boston Children’s Museum developing the popular “Kids Are Cooking” program and also had a successful catering business, “Eats Meets West.”

Debra has lived in Japan and Italy, studying Italian, Indian, Korean, and Japanese cuisine. She has done countless cooking demonstrations and classes on food culture in the Boston area as well as for the Japan embassy’s Information and Culture Center in Washington, D.C., the United States embassy in Tokyo, and for its American Cultural Centers in Japan.