Donabe are made from highly porous clays known for their heat retention properties. The clays for making donabe are --not surpassingly—also well-regarded for making teapots and tea containers. These clays include Shigaraki, Iga, Banko, and Mashiko. As a student of tea ceremony, I grew to love all of these types of pottery—but none more than Iga. Super porous Iga clay has phenomenal heat retention powers. The clay is said to “breath.” It does feel as if it is alive. Iga-ware is known for its fine webs of crackle and subtle color shifts from white-yellows to gray-browns. Iga-ware pots display something of the rustic humbleness of the finest “wabi” teabowls. In the crackle that occurs spontaneously in the firing, one feels the happenstance and great simplicity of nature. My tea teacher used to encourage us to look for landscapes in the surface of the teabowls.
In LA, we might not have long snowy winters, but we do have endless choices for eating hotpot. Not only do we have endless restaurants to choose from, even better, all the things we need to make hotpot dinners at home can be found right here in town. One of my favorites is a Japanese kitchen supply shop in West Hollywood called Toiro. Marie Kondo features one of their Iga claypots on her website. But I recommend visiting Toiro online. The choices for gorgeous pots and tableware will delight you. The owner, Naoko Takei Moore also sells high quality pantry items and has a cookbook to boot. All this dedicated to “your happy donabe life!” Now, who could argue with that?
The book is fun because there are classic and modern dishes. So far, I have been sticking with the traditional ideas--like the sizzling mushrooms and tofu in miso sauce, the ginger chicken and chicken in Ginger Amazake Hotpot, tonjiru, salmon hotpot, lotus root in lack vinegar.... and this year, I will be trying out her Oshogatsu menu--which looks amazing.
Her book is gorgeous and full of history--and if you use it with her online recipes, you will be in business. Also her the items she sells at her shop are beyond beautiful--not just the donabe--which I love and have three. But the lacquer--and that is really what I have fallen most in love with.
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