Marumiya Milano Doria Japanese Rice Gratin — 246g

A doria is a Japanese rice gratin, and this is one in a box with the rice already in it, about two minutes in the microwave, no oven, nothing added. A cheesy white sauce and a tomato meat sauce of onion, pork and soy mince go over Japanese short-grain rice, 246 g in the box, 160 g of it rice: an everyday supermarket bowl, and one of only two Western dishes in Marumiya's otherwise Japanese and Chinese range of eighteen. If you like a cheesy pasta bake, this is that idea with rice underneath instead of pasta.

丸美屋 ミラノ風ドリア. Marumiya mirano-fū doria. The box says "Milano-style", and that is worth a moment: doria is Japanese, not Italian. It was invented at a Yokohama hotel around 1930 by a Swiss chef improvising for a guest who was unwell, and it has been a standard of Japanese home and restaurant cooking ever since.

The "Milano" is a Japanese flourish as well. It comes from the version on the menu at Saizeriya, the Italian-style family restaurant chain that invented it, and no such dish exists in Milan or anywhere else in Italy. If you have eaten that one in Japan, expect the same idea rather than the same plate: theirs is on yellow turmeric rice; this is plain white rice, heated in a microwave.

What you're getting

• Tomato, cheese and mince, nothing on the ingredient list would look strange in an Australian kitchen. The white sauce is built on milk with a flour roux and cheese through it; the meat sauce is tomato-forward, with Worcestershire sauce and garlic behind it.
• The rice comes with it. Inside the box is a sealed tray of Japanese short-grain rice and two separate sauce pouches: a white one and a meat one. You are not buying a sauce to pour over rice you cooked yourself.
• The mince is deliberately part meat, part soy. On the meat sauce's list onion comes first, then pork, then textured soy protein: ahead of the tomato. Expect a savoury tomato sauce carrying mince through it rather than a heavy, meaty one.
• There is no browned, crisp cheese top. A microwave does not brown anything, and the maker specifically forbids putting this pack in an oven or a toaster oven. If the doria in your head is golden and bubbling under a grill, this is not that.
• It is a modest bowl: 246 g, 160 g of it rice. Right for a desk lunch or a smaller dinner, and a big appetite will want something alongside it. What is in the tray is one honest single serve.
• Allergens: contains milk, wheat, soy and apple. Australia's allergen chart has no apple category, so apple cannot appear in the pack's allergen box here — check the ingredients, not the chart; ours is the fuller list.
• Allergens, one more: the pack also declares beef, chicken and pork, which Japan asks for and Australia does not treat as allergens. That is seven things to check, more than most things we sell.

Two more things before you buy. It lives in the cupboard, not the fridge: the sauce pouches are sealed and sterilised under heat and pressure, which is what makes a retort pouch keep, and nothing needs chilling until you open it. And despite the white sauce and the cheese, this is not a vegetarian dish: there is pork in the meat sauce, and chicken and beef extracts in the white one.

Heating it: peel the lid right off the rice tray, pour the white sauce over the rice first and the meat sauce over that, and level it out. Rest the lid back on loosely. It will not re-seal, and it is not meant to. About two minutes at 600W, or two and a half at 500W. If the rice is still firm underneath, give it a little longer. Never use an oven or a toaster oven, never heat it with the lid still sealed, and skip the microwave's automatic reheat setting: the maker warns that it overheats this one.