Ilva of Lucullian Delights recently announced a fun little blog event, Show us your kitchen. So here it is, the crown jewel of my tiny, cramped apartment kitchen—my mizuya tansu, or Japanese kitchen chest. The photo doesn’t nearly do it justice, but it’s a beautiful yet functional piece of kitchen history.
My mizuya tansu is around one hundred and thirty years old. It has an ancient grace, yet its lines are clean and modern. I particularly love all its little details, the small sliding cupboard, the tiny, narrow drawer (for chopsticks?), the small, deep cupboard with the pull-out door (for tea? sake?), the decorative iron lock (a cash box for paying home-delivery food vendors?).
I’ve found uses for all the nooks and crannies of my mizuya. The tiny, narrow drawer is perfect for small or narrow items that get lost in larger drawers, such as meat and candy thermometers, a syringe and needle for injecting brine. The wide, shallow drawer holds a shortbread mold, a marble cheese board (good for rolling pie dough), some extra aprons, silicon muffin “tins”, and a madeleine tin. Pots are in the largest cupboard, bowls on the top cupboard, and baking dishes in the lower cupboard. The mysterious pull-out cupboard sometimes stores a bottle or two of olive oil, or loose bags of spices. Come to think of it, that unusual storage space might be a good spot for keeping tea and coffee.
The mizuya tansu is a silent testament to the past. Looking at it, I wonder about its previous owners. Were they rich or poor? Did they live in the city or the country? What did they store in their mizuya tansu? Were they good cooks? Only the tansu knows.
