Marumiya Chuka Don Pork & Vegetable Rice Bowl — 305g

A whole chuka don in one box, and the rice is already in it. Six things: bamboo shoot, carrot, Chinese cabbage, baby corn, wood ear mushroom and pork, under a thick, gently savoury sauce with sesame oil and ginger running through it, over Japanese short-grain rice. Two or three minutes in the microwave, depending on how powerful yours is, and it's dinner. It's a supermarket bowl in Japan rather than a restaurant one, and it's honest about that.

丸美屋 五目中華丼 ごはん付き. Marumiya gomoku chuka don. Two things the name won't tell you. Chuka don means "Chinese-style rice bowl", but the dish is Japanese. It was first made in Tokyo, and the "Chinese" in the name describes the style rather than where it comes from. And gomoku isn't five of anything in particular; it just means "a mix of things", which is why the pack happily lists six. Look that one up in English and you'll get a board game.

What you're getting

• The rice comes with it. Inside the box is a tray of Japanese short-grain rice and a separate pouch of topping: you are not buying a sauce to pour over rice you cooked yourself. Worth saying plainly, because on an English-language shelf the sauce sachets and the complete bowls both get called "bowl".
• Savoury rather than sweet, and not hot at all. There's no chilli in it. Soy, garlic and ginger, with sesame oil coming through at the end and clam, scallop and chicken stocks underneath for depth.
• Wood ear mushroom is the one ingredient most people here won't have met. It's the same thing Asian grocers sell as black fungus or cloud ear. It's in there for texture rather than flavour, crunchy, and a little slippery, so don't expect it to taste of much.
• It's a modest bowl: 305 g, 160 g of that rice. Right for a smaller dinner or a desk lunch. If you have a big appetite, put something beside it: a cup of noodles is the usual answer.
• It lives in the cupboard, not the fridge, pork and all. That's what makes it the thing you fall back on when there's nothing else in the house.
• Allergens: contains wheat (gluten), soy, sesame, mollusc and apple, plus chicken and pork, which Japan declares and Australia does not.
• Allergens, the two chart gaps: Japan's chart has no mollusc category, so the clam and scallop sit in the ingredient list, not the allergen box. Australia's chart has no apple category either, so apple cannot appear in an allergen box here. Check the ingredients; ours is the fuller list.
• There is no vegetarian way to eat this one: the mollusc is clam and scallop stock in the sauce.

Heating it: peel the lid right off the rice tray, tip the pouch over the rice and level it out, then rest the lid back on loosely, and lay it upside down, or the topping sticks to it. Don't heat it with the lid still sealed down: the container can burst. The pack gives a time for every wattage, three minutes at 500W, two and a half at 600W, a minute and a half at 1000W, one minute at 1500W, so use the line that matches your microwave rather than the first one printed. Don't use the auto-reheat setting, which overheats this one, and never put it in a toaster oven or a conventional oven. There's a hot-water method too, if you're camping: the rice tray goes in with its lid still on for about fifteen minutes, and the topping pouch, unopened, for five.