Momo Fujita-Clarkson is one of those people who can produce vast quantities of delicious food without becoming flustered. It is something she has been doing for as long as she can remember and now forms the basis of her Wolvercote-based catering business, I’m Japanese.

She grew up in rural Japan, in Konoshita-cho, a village of around 50 families in Mie Prefecture.

Her father was (and still is) the local Buddhist priest and because Japanese religious festivals and other special occasions generally involve the whole community sharing a meal, Mrs Fujita-Clarkson would always help her mother and grandmother, carrying dishes when she was small and graduating to food preparation.

“That’s how I grew up — peeling sweetcorn and shelling the peas. I used to love it,” she recalled. “It was normal for us to cook for 20 or 30 people.”

Local farmers would bring rice and vegetables to the temple, so they often did not have to buy food.

She also remembers going with her grandmother to the nearby mountains to collect mushrooms. Seasonality is of key importance in Japanese cuisine and extends beyond the ingredients of dishes to the way they are presented.

She said: “For example, in summer you serve food in a clear glass bowl. Just looking at it cools you down.”

As well as being the priest, her father was the local English teacher and they often had English-speaking visitors.

In 1994, when she was 19, Mrs Fujita-Clarkson travelled to Oxford to improve her English at a language school. She stayed on to study Languages for Business at Oxford Brookes University, a degree encompassing English, Spanish and business studies that led to a career in recruitment and marketing at Brookes and later Bucks New University in High Wycombe.

Opting to take voluntary redundancy two years ago, she has been a full-time mother to two young daughters.

But meeting up with two old Japanese friends who had started their own businesses inspired her to fulfil a long-standing dream to start a catering company that would introduce British people to Japanese food.

Since early 2011 she has run weekly stalls at the farmers’ markets in Wolvercote and East Oxford, where she sells both sushi and a range of other Japanese food, such as fried tofu, miso soup and edamame (boiled soy beans).

Because certain Japanese cookery techniques, such as making ‘inside out’ Californian rolls, are hard to learn from a book, Mrs Fujita-Clarkson also runs courses for small groups.

A recent event at Wolvercote Village Hall attracted seven participants, most of whom had some previous experience of Japanese food and were keen to learn how to make it themselves.

“People do like what they know: in other words, sushi,” Mrs Fujita-Clarkson said.

But she is keen to showcase the whole range of Japanese food, explaining that in Japan sushi is really a special occasion food and that there are many delicious dishes that are far less time-consuming to make and more suitable for family meals or children’s packed lunches.

While some specialist ingredients, such as sushi rice, wasabi (green horseradish) and soy sauce, have to be imported, Mrs Fujita-Clarkson is keen to follow the tradition she grew up with by incorporating local, seasonal ingredients into her food where possible.

For example, she has recently been making nasu no aemono, an adaptable aubergine dish that can be eaten with salad leaves or stirred into pasta.

She sometimes adapts Japanese food to British tastes — for example, using Worcestershire sauce in her meatballs — taking inspiration from her mother, whom she describes as “a bit of an experimenter” in the kitchen.

The hardest thing so far, she said, has been judging what quantity of food to make, because most Japanese food has to be eaten fresh.

Cooking for markets and festivals can be a gamble, because the number of customers varies greatly depending on the weather.

“I’d rather be sold out than worry about what to do with the left-overs,” she reflected.

Mrs Fujita-Clarkson has been invited to run a pop-up restaurant at Cogges, near Witney, later in the autumn and will be attending the Oxford Castle Food and Wine Festival this weekend and Thame Food Festival on September 24.

She also offers a catering service for weddings and other special occasions. Ultimately, she would like to open a permanent café or a take-away food shop.

Her husband, Simon Clarkson, an artist and art teacher, has been supportive of her business by looking after their daughters while she is working.

But he admits he is not a big fan of Japanese cuisine, preferring the traditional British fare of his Lancashire upbringing.

That said, Mrs Fujita-Clarkson tests new dishes on him.

“If he likes it, I am quite confident that I can sell it!” she said.