Please check out my new "Chabudai"! I brought this back from Japan. Chabudai is a Japanese short-height table which can be used to serve meal or tea. I've been looking for the right kind for a while and finally found it.
I was so thrilled to see it unwrapped. It's a hand-made of the traditional "Echizen-Nuri" lacquer table with the folding legs. Echizen-nuri is one of the oldest and best-known lacquer ware from Fukui, Japan.
Look, how detailed and beautiful the finish is!
I also love staring this new Chabudai with my double-lid donabe rice cooker, "Kamado-san".
Speaking of "Kamado-san", I made the sushi rice and we did Temaki (hand-roll) sushi dinner. With this donabe, you can make the really shiny and delicious sushi rice! You can cook the rice exactly in the same way as cooking the regular rice, except that you use about 1.5 tablespoons less water to cook the 3 rice-cup of white rice. It's because you will add the vinegar seasoning after the rice is cooked, so you want to cook it a little firmer than the regular serving rice.
Here's the recipe for the regular rice. So, you can use 2 tablespoons less water than what the instruction says (measure 600 ml water, then take 2 tablespoons out).
While the rice is cooking, make the vinegar seasoning. Combine 5 tablespoons of brown rice vinegar (or regular rice vinegar), 1.5 tablespoons of sugar, and 1 teaspoon of salt and dissolve completely. As soon as the rice is cooked and rested for 20 minutes, as the recipe says, open the lids and add the vinegar seasoning to the rice. Fluff the rice quickly so that the rice is evenly seasoned. Then, cover the top with a tenugui cloth or a towel and set aside.
Once the rice is ready, making temaki dinner is so easy! We had maguro akami (tuna, red meat), tai (snapper), tako (octopus), hamachi (yellowtail), sake (salmon), maguro chu-toro (medium-fatty tuna), yaki-uni (baked uni), natto (fermented soy beans), minced okra, etc. I think I made myself about 15 temaki rolls! I was so stuffed after the dinner.
Yet, we still had a good amount of the leftover. So, for the next day lunch, I prepared the chirashi sushi bowls with the leftover ingredients. We got to enjoy the wonderful sushi rice and fish twice.
