Tag: bowl

Brussels Sprouts and Tofu

brussels sprouts
brussels sprouts and tofu

brussels sprouts, tofu, and rice.

I hated Brussels sprouts as a kid, as most kids do.  I remember my mom making them on occasion, usually steamed with butter melted on them.  She was the only one who ate them.

(Also, “Brussels sprouts??” I was under the impression until about 2 weeks ago that it was “Brussel sprouts.”)

Now that I am a so-called “adult,” I have only become slightly more receptive to these small green balls of vegetable. However, this recipe from Plenty by Yotam Ottolenghi has me almost craving them.  The best part about it is the way they are fried: with lots of oil and salt, face down on hight heat for a couple of minutes.  One side gets black and crispy, one side is still green.

Also, with the addition of tofu, this recipe makes a meal in one bowl!

Brussels Sprouts and Tofu

Ingredients

2 Tbs sweet chile sauce (the most common brand is Mae Ploy, we had a bottle in the fridge that was “borrowed” from our cafeteria back in college)
1 1/2 Tbs soy sauce
3 Tbs toasted sesame oil (don’t skip this! It makes the dish)
1 tsp rice vinegar
1 Tbs maple syrup
5 oz firm tofu
1 lb Brussels sprouts
about 3/4 cup canola oil
salt
1 cup sliced green onions
1/2 small fresh red chile, deseeded and minced (we used a jalapeño, so it was green.  Whoops.)
1 1/2 cups shiitake mushrooms, halved or quarted
1 cup cilantro leaves
1 Tbs toasted sesame seeds (optional, for garnish)

Rice for serving

Instructions

Find a medium bowl and in it, whisk together the sweet chile and soy sauces, 2 Tbs of the sesame oil, the vinegar and maple syrup. Cut the tofu into 3/8-inch-thick slices and then each slice into two squarish pieces.  Stir the tofu into the marinade and set aside.

Trim the bottoms off the Brussels sprouts and cut each into three slices from the top down.  Find a large frying pan, add 4 Tbs of canola oil, and heat up well.  Throw in half the Brussels spouts, or less than depending on the size of your pan (when I did this the oil spit like crazy, so watch out!).  You want most the sprouts in the pan to have at least one side touching the pan, so no sprouts are stacked on top of one another.  Sprinkle some salt on them and cook on high heat for about 2 minutes.  Don’t stir to much, but shake it around if necessary.  You want the sprouts to be almost burnt on one side. Remove to a bowl and add the rest of the sprouts to the pan with more canola oil.  Add more salt, and 2 minutes later, transfer the rest to the bowl as well.

Add 2 more Tbs of canola oil to the pan and sauté the green onions, minced chili, and mushrooms for 1-2 minutes.  Transfer to the bowl that the sprouts are in.

Leave the pan on high heat and use tongs to lift half of the tofu pieces from the marinade to the pan (again, oil spits!) (don’t throw away marinade!). Space them apart and leave in one layer so that they can fry properly.  Reduce to medium heat and cook for 2 minutes on each side.  Transfer to the sprouts bowl and repeat with the rest of the tofu.

Remove the pan from the heat and return all the cooked ingredients from the spouts bowl back to the pan.  Add the leftover tofu marinade and half of the cilantro leaves.  Toss everything together, and let the pan cool down a bit.  Then taste and add salt if needed.  Stir in the remaining Tbs of sesame oil and serve warm, garnished with sesame seeds and/or the rest of the cilantro.  Eat with rice or by itself.

Mexican Bowls

Mexican Bowls

Mexican Bowls
Mexican Bowls

Mexican Bowls

The other night, dinner rolled around, and I was feeling incredibly lazy. Nothing that I could think of eating actually sounded good to me, so I put Jonah in charge. There’s a restaurant here in Portland called Por Que Non that has really good Mexican food. They have this dish called a Bryan’s Bowl that is just a bowl of delicious rice and beans and meat and cheese and guacamole and salsa and everything you could ever want in a little bowl. It’s incredibly good. So Jonah suggested making something like the Bryan’s Bowl, and I was not particularly optimistic, because usually when restaurants have something like that they have some secret delicious sauce they pour over it to make it so freaking good. And we didn’t. But…oh well. So he searched something or other on the internet and found this recipe for Cilantro Lime Rice to use as the base for our Mexican bowls. And man oh man, it made all the difference.

Mexican Rice Bowls

Ingredients

Cilantro Lime Rice

1 cup uncooked white rice
1 teaspoon butter
2 cloves garlic, minced
2 tsp plus 1 Tbl lime juice, freshly squeezed is highly preferred
1 15-oz can vegetable or chicken broth
1 cup water
2 tsp granulated sugar
4 Tbl fresh chopped cilantro

Mexican Rice Bowl

Cilantro Lime Rice
Black Beans
Chopped Red Onion
Chopped tomato (or salsa)
Chopped avocado (or guacamole)
Sour Cream
Hot sauce
Lime wedges
Chopped cilantro
Tortilla chips

Instructions

Cilantro Lime Rice

Let’s start with the rice. Put the rice, butter, garlic, 2 tsp of lime juice, broth, and water in a pan. Bring the contents to a boil, reduce the heat to low, and cover and cook the rice until it’s tender (about 15-20 minutes). While the rice is cooking, mix the leftover Tbl of lime juice with the sugar and cilantro. When the rice is done, remove it from the heat and stir in the cilantro/lime mixture.

Mexican Rice Bowl

While the rice is cooking you can also prep the rest of your ingredients for your bowl. We drained the beans and just heated them in the microwave, chopped the onions, and got out the salsa, guacamole, sour cream, cholula, and some tortilla chips.

Now it’s time to assemble your bowl. I did mine kind of like you would if it were the filling of a burrito, making even layers of all the ingredients I wanted. I also used my bowl as kind of a layered dip and ate it with tortilla chips for an added bit of crunch. Oh man. I may not have been in the mood for this meal at the beginning of the evening, but it really hit the spot! Enjoy!

Spicy-Miso Salmon and Citrus Rice Bowl

Salmon rice bowl
Miso Salmon
Miso Salmon

Miso Salmon

This meal all started because Annie gave me a wonderful Christmas present: The Sriracha Cookbook.  You’ve probably seen Sriracha at your local asian restaurant, and you may know it as “rooster sauce” – or if you don’t know it, its basically an asian hot sauce made with chiles and garlic and its ohhh so good.  And you need it for the recipe that follows.

So the Sriracha Cookbook, as one might expect, is chock full of recipes that include Sriracha in them.  I picked the Miso-Sriracha Glazed Salmon recipe for dinner, mostly because we already had miso paste and Sriracha in our house.  The recipe in the book tells you to serve it atop steamed rice, but I wanted to do something more interesting, so I found a great recipe on Martha Stewart.com that I adapted to include the miso-Sriracha salmon.  Its a wonderful rice bowl that includes salmon, orange slices, and sugar snap peas atop some brown rice with a great orange sauce and mint to sprinkle on top of it all.  It tasted so light and substantial at the same time, and was a wonderful meal in a bowl!

A note on the rice: I actually used a rice called Camargue Red Rice, which Annie’s mom brought us from the south of France, where it grows.  The package had no English on it so I actually had to get online and do a little research before cooking it.  Anyway, it was delicious but I don’t think its necessary to make this dish great, so I put brown rice in the recipe below.

Spicy Miso Salmon and Citrus Rice Bowl

Ingredients

Spicy Miso Salmon

1 1/2 Tb. toasted sesame oil
1/4 cup brown sugar
2 Tb. soy sauce
2 Tb. white miso paste
1 1/2 Tb. Sriracha
1 clove garlic, minced
1 lb. salmon fillet(s)

Citrus Rice Bowl

4 oranges (I used Valencia)
A 1-inch piece of fresh ginger, peeled and thinly sliced
1 bay leaf
1 tsp. coriander seeds
1 Tb. rice vinegar
1 tsp. soy sauce
1 tsp. honey
1 tsp. toasted sesame oil
1 cup uncooked brown rice
1 1/2 cups sugar snap peas
1/4 cup fresh mint, chopped, for garnish
sliced green onions, green part only, for garnish

Instructions

Cook the rice according to the package directions.  I added a bit of chopped garlic and butter into 3 1/3 cups of water, brought it to a boil, and then simmered for about an hour.

In a small mixing bowl, make the Spicy Miso Salmon glaze: combine the oil, brown sugar, soy sauce, miso paste, Sriracha, and garlic.  Set aside.

Peel and separate 2 oranges into individual boats.  Now comes the hard part: you are supposed to detach and discard the membranes in order to get to the meat of the orange slice.  I experimented a lot during this step, and eventually found that I could cut down the back of each orange segment, pull it apart, and pull off the membrane from each side.  You could just skip this step entirely, but the orange slices won’t look as pretty, and you won’t get the same taste.  Regardless, put these orange segments in a bowl and set aside.

Remove the stems from the sugar snap peas, rinse, and chop into 1/2-inch pieces (I just chopped each pod in half).  Set aside.

Now juice the remaining 2 oranges into a small saucepan, and add the sliced ginger and bay leaf.  Crush the coriander seeds with the side of a knife and add them to the orange juice mixture, then bring to a boil.  Cook the mixture until it reduces to about 2/3 cup, about 6 minutes.  Take it off the heat and let it cool, then strain into a bowl to get rid of the ginger, bay leaf, and seeds.  Now whisk in the vinegar, soy sauce, honey, and oil.

Preheat the broiler to high. Lay the salmon fillet(s) across an aluminum foil-lined broiling pan (or any baking sheet with a rim).  Take out the glaze you made in step 2 and spread it generously on top of the salmon.  Broil the salmon 6 inches from the flame (or heat coil, as the case may be), until the fish flakes easily, about 10 minutes.  I spread more of the glaze on the fish after 5 minutes of broiling.

Dish the rice into bowls, and top with salmon, peas, and orange segments. Garnish with mint and green onion slices.  Reheat the orange sauce/mixture if it needs reheating, and drizzle it generously over everything.

Enjoy!