Donabe: Classic and Modern Japanese Clay Pot Cooking [A One-Pot Cookbook]

I had always considered a donabe as a vessel for one-pot dishes, mostly hot pots, soups and stews. This book first suggests—then proves through chapters divided by different uses and different styles of donabe—that a donabe can be used for many types of dishes. You will find recipes for rice dishes; steamed vegetables and meats; roasted and fried fish, chicken, pork, tofu, and more; smoked meats, seafood, cheese, vegetables; besides the more well-known hot pots, soups and stews. This is a lovely compilation of Japanese recipes: Rich, warming, exciting and varied in flavors. If you are at all interested in Japanese foods and cooking, this is a book you need to work through. Plus, it has an entire chapter at the end, which gives recipes for dashi, sauces and condiments. It should be noted one of the authors of this book, Naoko Takei Moore, is the owner of Toiro Kitchen, a big seller of donabe cookware in the US. A good move on her part? Maybe. Her website has many styles and pieces of cookware offered for sale. And quality donabe from the Iga Provence of Japan is not inexpensive. Also on her store website are a LOT of donabe recipes. I have checked, and except for the basic rice cooking instructions, the 104 recipes on the website do not really overlap those in this book. Some come close, but they are different. You might want to take a look at those recipes, because they will give you a feel for those in this book. And be sure to check out the "Look Inside" feature on this product page. Ten Speed Press always does such a great job with this feature. A real donabe is not mandatory to make good use of this cookbook: I have been wanting to buy a quality donabe for several years now, and this book has helped me with my decision-making. The info in this book has also convinced me that my choice to NOT buy an inexpensive donabe from the oriental market was a good one. In the meantime, I have learned that I can get decent results—not perfect, but not bad—from regular pots on the stovetop and my electric rice cooker. I even use a huge vintage electric fondue pot from the 70’s with good results. Before introducing recipes, this book will clue you in on how to care for and season donabe, and dos and don’ts for handling donabe while cooking. It is a very helpful abundance of info. There are many vegetarian and vegan recipes included, and they are marked as such. There are also options provided to turn regular dishes into vegan dishes. You will also find suggestions to create a shime course (finishing course) from the remaining broth. I find some of the shime suggestions to be great recipes in their own right, and suitable for a separate meal. Beautiful photographs of prepared dishes, envy-provoking donabe pots, action photos, scenery. Substitutions are offered in many instances: Dijon for Japanese mustard, green onions for negi, mushroom and miso options, and more. Pantry ingredients are not hard to find if you’ve got an oriental market nearby. If not, Amazon has it all. There are pictures of each dish, sometimes the pre-assembled ingredients, sometimes the ingredients in the pot, sometimes its shime course. The first chapter is a compilation of hot pots using quite a variety of main and accompanying ingredients: Tofu, beef, pork, fish, oysters, duck, mushrooms, cabbage, gyoza (dumplings), even Korean kimchi, and more. I loved the “Chicken Meatballs in Hot Sesame Miso Broth”, a two-column list of ingredients, but ingredients that I can find easily at an oriental market or are usually on my pantry shelves. In the next chapter are rice dishes cooked in a donabe double-lidded rice cooker, and it is one revelation after another. There are several recipes that I will recreate again and again, but my favorite is a small red snapper, just gutted, cleaned and scaled, placed in the pot along with the rice and dashi, ginger, king mushrooms and a few other ingredients. I also love the “Juicy (boneless) Chicken-Wing Rice”. Love the chapter on soups, stews and braises: Everything from dried soybeans; simmered vegetables in dashi and sake, mirin and brown sugar; braised sweet and spicy kabocha; to salt-marinated 1 pound hunks of pork shoulder; miso Keema curry (Indian curry with ground meat); simmered thin-sliced beef with noodles and potatoes; soy and sake flavored ground chicken and eggs over rice. There is even a salmon chowder—and if you know chowders, you can adapt this recipe to just about any ingredient combination. There are also instructions for using a donabe for a sous vide technique, with a digital thermometer through the steam hole. The donabe can be used as a steamer: The chapter includes combinations of vegetables, fish or seafood and vegetables and tofu, and sauces. It provides a custard recipe. There are rice balls, dumplings, and steamed cakes. In the chapter using a tagine-style donabe, I found recipes that might just “force” me to buy this specialty donabe, (although a lidded heavy skillet already on your kitchen shelf might work): Roasted potatoes, steam-fried vegetables, steamed clams and vegetables, pork sukiyaki, crunchy lotus root in a vinegar sauce, and many more. There is a chapter on smoking, too. Dashi recipes, sauces and condiments are located at the back of the book, and you will find yourself referring to them often. Sometimes Japanese cookbooks are difficult to maneuver through, with so many foreign ingredients to understand and memorize. Maybe that statement is only true for cooks with brains like mine, which struggle with foreign words. But I had no trouble working my way through these recipes. (I will still take the book with me to the market….) Plus there is a decent 8-page comprehensive and valuable glossary. There are two pages explaining important kitchen tools and a short resource page. *I received a temporary download of this book from the publisher. I used it for several months, and when the book was finally published, I bought a hard copy—that is how much I like it.

This cookbook is wonderful. If you enjoy cooking with donabe, I highly recommend. I use it regularly and everything has always been delicious and the recipes clearly written and easy to follow.

Excellent book on history, use and recipes to prepare Japanese meals using donabe, clay pot. From stove/oven to table for serving. Also website to follow. Well designed. Good reading and photography.

First of all I want to thank Naoko for making this book as I have been waiting for this book since I followed a few of her recepies on her website with great success. I want to try out Japanese home cooking but minus all the technical and time consuming preparations. And, I rather wold like to keep the cooking time to under 45 minutes so we can actually have dinner after our busy day from work. Her book is beautiful. The recepies are very clear. I also enjoy simply reading her stories as well as other important supplements. Most importantly, I find the format extremely outstanding. The ingredient list not only shows the amount but follows the sequence of the preparation. The description compliments the list while added the how-to's and timing. Very clever and easy to follow!! We have now enjoyed many nights as well as friends' compliments to my new found cooking. We love this wonderful introduction to Japanese food, taste, texture and colors. We appreciate the down-to-earth donabe as a beautiful working of a functional art!

Good cookbook,and delicious recipes with beautiful pictures. The ratio of water was a bit off, but I guess that is a trial and error thing. I have found that it needed a bit more water than stated, but maybe that’s just my stove.

I have to go buy one of the pots now. This book is beautiful and I love slow cooking, soups, broths, and this just touched my heart. Even the photos are fun and inspiring. I can't wait to use the recipes. You need a Japanese market near you to gather all the ingredients. I know there will be challenges finding everything in each recipe, but I'm up for the challenge and learning curve. This isn't a cook-dinner-in-30-minutes kind of book; it's more of a traditional, meditative way to cook from what I can tell.

A truly great book that explains how to use a Japanese donabe to make healthy and (equally importantly) delicious food. Several styles of donabe and their associated recipes are discussed, along with buying advice about which style may suit you best. There is an emphasis on donabe made in Iga, Japan. I have used a kamado-san, made in Iga and described in this book, to make rice and several grain dishes and I can testify they are great pieces of kitchen equipment. Quinoa, even cooked plain, is amazing. Rice is equally good, and very easy to make in a kamado-san. But you don't absolutely need to buy an Iga-made donabe to make some of these recipes successfully; for example the Tagine recipes could be made in any tagine, and many of the recipes could be made in standard western pots or skillets. Although this might look like a specialized book it has a large number of easy to execute recipes you can make with equipment you probably already own. But the book will also make you curious about buying a high quality donabe, and you'll probably find your food will get even better cooked in one.

I have been reading Naoko's blog and cooking her recipes for some time. I also own most of Naoko's Iga donabes. Naoko's blog recipes have always turned out to be not only delicious, but staples in our household. I could not wait until Naoko's first cookbook came out! Now that I have my own copy and have been savoring reading and cooking from it - it certainly is several notches above any other Japanese cookbook that I own(considerable!). I have also been so pleasantly surprised with the excellent general Japanese cooking techniques and sourcing information included in Naoko's cookbook. I cannot recommend this cookbook any higher. I just love it. Buy yourself a copy and learn what delicious gourmet Japanese food tastes like! It will definitely broaden your culinary horizons. Terrific job, Naoko!

Ottimo libro per entrare nel mondo della cucina in pentole di terracotta giapponesi: estremamente chiaro e completo accompagna il lettore dalla scelta delle pentole, passando per la tradizione, fino alle ricette più moderne. Il tutto corredato da bellissime fotografie. Consigliatissimo. PRO: - Ottima qualità della carta - Ricette tradizionali e moderne - Fotografie bellissime - Molto ricco (oltre 300 pagine) CONTRO: - L'inglese può essere una barriera linguistica per molti. Nota: Alcune ricette hanno ingredienti molto difficili da trovare in Italia.

This book is utterly heartwarming. The author clearly genuinely loves donabe cookery, and has become a close friend of a family of 8th generation donabe makers. There is one chapter each on how to make different types of donabe produce their best food. It lightly sketches how the coarse clay of a good donabe contributes to incredibly flavourful food, through both its heat retention properties and infrared rays. I appreciate that vegan recipes/options are marked, although it's primarily an omnivorous book. Read it - you'll find yourself wanting a donabe to make intimate hot-pot tabletop dinners. It's a book that lingers.

I love this book! the recipes are easy to follow and the photos are fantastic. I specifically went to Nagatani-en (the maker of all the donabes pictured within) in Japan to purchase a donabe to try some of the recipes out. All worked well!

Es un libro muy completo de la comida tradicional Japonesa. Mucha variedad de sopas que. Inca fallaran cuando invites a tus amigos a cenar.

Das Buch finde ich sehr schön aufgemacht und sehr informativ. Auf jeden Fall zu empfehlen. Leider wurde das sehr hochwertige Buch nicht in einem Paket versandt, weswegen es grobe äußerliche Schäden am Buch gibt. Ich verstehe nicht, warum man so ein Buch nicht besser verpacken kann.. Ich werde es nun reklamieren und woanders bestellen