In a lovely restaurant called Shiroku in the Forus department store in Kanazawa, Japan, we had our first, and indeed second encounter with Donburi, or Japanese Rice Bowls. It’s a lovely way of eating, warm and welcoming and nurturing, you can mix the fish and miso soup and rice and accompaniments in all sorts of lovely ways. We loved it so much we didn’t just go back a second night for more, we also made a sketch so we could try and do it for ourselves when we got back to the UK! You can, of course, have a good bone broth instead of the miso soup; we did on that second night, and it was delicious. There will be plenty of the pickle left over; it is very good indeed by itself, in a bowl of noodles, or in a cheese sarny, though we drain it of all liquid when it is two hours old. The rice we've used here is Shinmei Akafuji Koshihikari Rice from Ishikawa Prefecture (the capital of which is Kanazawa), we get it from the Japan Centre. It's not exactly cheap, but it is delicious. If you have a preferred brand, by all means use it; it doesn't need to be too clumpy, like it does for sushi, but it should be possible to pick up lumps of it with chopsticks

Rice:-

150g good quality Japanese sushi rice

1 tspn sugar

½ tspn salt

1 – 2 tspns rice vinegar to taste

300g sushi quality tuna, cut into 1cm cubes

1 ripe avocado, cut into 1cm pieces

The pickle:-

Half a Chinese pointed cabbage, finely shredded

1 courgette, finely sliced or spiralised

50mls cider vinegar

50mls mirin

10g sugar

5g salt

1 dstspn very finely chopped dill stalks

The miso soup:-

500mls dashi

5 tspns white miso paste

1 – 2 tspns light soy sauce to taste

To serve:-

2 wedges of lemon

Powdered sea lettuce (optional, but lovely, available from good oriental stockists like the Japan Centre or Wing Yip)

Wasabi

Pickled ginger

Start with the rice:-

• Put the rice into a big bowl. Add plenty of cold water to the bowl then gently stir and mix the rice with your hand. When the water becomes cloudy with starch sieve it away. Repeat this step up to 5 times or until the water becomes clear. After washing the rice soak in plenty of cold water for at least 30 minutes

Meanwhile, make the pickle:-

• Put the cabbage and courgette in a glass bowl. Mix the dill, vinegar, mirin, sugar and salt in a bowl, adding 100mls boiling water, stir until the sugar has dissolved. Leave to cool for 20 mins, the pour over the cabbage and courgette. Set aside

Return to the rice:-

• Drain the rice, then put it and 200 mls of water into a medium sized saucepan and put on the stove at maximum heat until the water boils. Once the water boils, turn down the heat to low and let the rice simmer for 15 minutes with the lid on

• Once the rice has simmered, remove the sauce pan from the stove, take the lid off, put a clean tea towel over it, put the lid back on and leave the rice to steam, off the heat, for a further 10 minutes. Take the lid off and leave to cool for 5 minutes

• Bring the dashi to a boil, turn the heat off, add the miso and taste. If it’s too fishy (bearing in mind it has a ton of bonito flakes in it), you can bring that down with soy sauce, added in dribs and drabs till you have the right balance. Set aside

Cut up your fish and avocado

• Spread the cooked rice out in the big bowl. Mix the sugar, salt and vinegar till the sugar and salt are dissolved and sprinkle over the rice, then mix in gently with your hands. Pack half of it into each of two soup bowls. Arrange the tuna and avocado on top so it covers it evenly

• At each place setting on your dining table, put some soy, wasabi, ginger, sea lettuce powder and a lemon wedge in tiny serving dishes. Put a small portion of the pickle in each of two small bowls. Put an empty soup plate at each setting too, along with chopsticks and a soup spoon each. Put about 400mls of dashi into a jug or gravy boat, and put it in the middle of the table. Finally, put one of the rice bowls in front of each person. The idea is that you spoon rice, tuna and avocado into the empty soup plate in front of you, dress it with the soup and/or the pickle, and/or the wasabi, ginger, lemon and sea lettuce, mixing it up in various combinations, and eat with the chopsticks and the soup spoon