As a Japanese living in the United States, my personal mission has been working as a bridge between Japanese and American cultures through cooking. This year, I finally managed to start my online shop, toiro (http://www.toirokitchen.com/ ), to introduce this amazing donabe (clay pot) rice cooker, Kamado-san. This month, my shop was mentioned in Los Angeles Times (3/18 issue)! Here is the web link.http://www.latimes.com/features/printedition/food/la-fo-onepotbox18-2009mar18,0,7236769.story
This was part of the article about "cooking rice with donabe" by Ms. Sonoko Sakai. She wrote a beautiful story about cooking with donabe.
http://www.latimes.com/features/food/la-fo-onepot18-2009mar18,0,6167325.story
Since the article came out, I have been receiving so many orders and inquiries. The first shipment of donabe which I imported from Japan is now almost sold out! As you can see from toiro's website, this double-lid donabe, Kamado-san, is very special. These donabe rice cookers are hand-crafted by Nagatani-en, which is a premium pottery producer from Iga, Japan. To make each donabe, it takes about 2 weeks. Once you experience the rice cooked with Kamado-san, you can never go back to the electric rice cooker, because it tastes that great.
I would like to THANK YOU to all the people who have purchased or have interest in our donabe pot. This is my utmost pleasure to know peole in this country cooking the rice with the Japanese donabe and enjoying the real quality rice like us!!!
In order to make the donabe rice cooking more accessible to the people in the United States, I tried to price Kamado-san as affordable as possible, and also I will continue to post more easy donabe rice recipes on toiro's website.
Once I got so many orders, I went to pick up more "rice measuring cups" (Japanese 1 rice cup measurement is 180 ml) from its importer, so that I can add it to each order as a "free gift". (This is a photo of 240 rice measuring cups in my car's trunk!) It's very important for me to do this, because I want to make sure that those who purchased Kamado-san can cook the rice with ease.
Besides Kamado-san, on toiro's website, I would like to continue to introduce more artisanal Japanese cooking tools, so please stay tuned. My goal is to introduce our wonderful food/ cooking culture to people in the United States through the wonderful Japanese cookware. In May, more donabe products from Iga, such as donabe steamer, donabe miso soup/ stew pot, multi-purpose donabe, etc. are scheduled to be on sale!
toiro's website: http://www.toirokitchen.com/
