The bowl is more than just a place to put cereal. It can be a gateway to the practice of mindful eating. It can be a blank canvas for your spontaneous creativity. Or it can be a comforting cradle in which to pile your favorite flavors. It’s up to you.
More and more restaurants and home cooks are serving “bowls,” and diners have embraced them with gusto. If you have used the bowl to enjoy all the delicious stuff in a burrito without a tortilla, or if you have encountered a Buddha Bowl, Zen Bowl, or Gratitude Bowl at a restaurant, then you’re already a part of the bowl trend.
So what is a bowl?
Quite simply, “a bowl” in this book starts with a grain or vegetable base, topped with a variety of components, and finishes with a sauce. Compare this, say, to a bowl of stew, where everything is cooked together; the bowl foods described in this book are composed and layered and piled on top of each other, sauced (or covered in hot broth), and served. Bowls can be hot or cold or room temperature, but they aren’t tossed like a salad. Once you sit down with it, you can mix your bowl as much as you like, or you can take bites of each separate element, working your way around the bowl.
The Buddha Bowl has been part of the healthy eating zeitgeist for years, in vegetarian restaurants and at Buddhist retreats. One origin story is that Buddhist monks, who lived to embrace the spiritual over money or possessions, roamed the countryside carrying a big bowl. The community supported the monks by adding food to the bowl. The resulting medley would be the original Buddha Bowl. (For a visual metaphor, imagine that the bowl is piled high with rice and vegetables, creating a rounded shape that resembles Buddha’s belly.) This macrobiotic tradition, which is rooted in a grain-based, yin-and-yang balancing practice, certainly contributes to the Buddha Bowl’s ongoing appeal. Whole grains are centering, right in the middle on the continuum of yin to yang.
In the tradition of the Buddhist monks, the bowl can be a pile of motley leftovers, and the simplest way to keep hunger at bay. It can also be part of the practice of mindfulness. Americans tend to eat a bread-, pasta-, and potato-based diet, while the ancient traditions of Asian countries are more rice-based. In a world where people often eat mindlessly, you can use the preparation and eating of your food bowl as a ritual. Eating a grain- and vegetable-centered diet is incredibly healthful and diverse when you opt for whole grains and borrow the flavors of all the rice-eating cuisines.
Your bowl is your friend. Some of the bowl ingredients like to sprawl out in a wide, pasta bowl–type dish. A bowl of this kind offers a wider surface to arrange your lovely toppings. Other recipes are for times when you want to feel comforted by the abundance of a deep bowl with its round belly.
Do you like to see everything you are going to eat in a wide expanse, or do you want to dig deep to find the mysteries that lie in the bottom of the bowl? Contemplating which bowl to use is a moment of mindfulness, as you consider the presentation of your beautiful food. A larger bowl will give you more “white space” in which to place the elements of your meal. A smaller bowl keeps you from overindulging. Some of the dessert bowl recipes are meant to be a little smaller, and so may feel more elegant in a smaller bowl.
“Negative space” is an important concept in Japanese culture and is called Ma. Ma is the calming, serene space between objects, the pause between statements that allows you to take them in, and the silence that frees you to think. We all need more Ma in our crowded, busy lives. Choosing a larger bowl gives you more room for Ma. Let your food have some space around it, so you can perceive it fully. Drizzle a little sauce on an expanse of grain, in between vegetables, or leave some open space for a feeling of stillness. Stillness is good.
Just stop for a moment to think about where your food came from, and all the people who labored over it. A person planted the seeds of every plant. Someone tended and harvested it. Many hands lifted it as it made its way from the field to your bowl. Pay attention to how you cook and compose your bowl. Give yourself the experience of making something beautiful and whole. Eat it with attention, observing the play of color and texture in your temporary work of art. Chew slowly. Take a moment to notice how your food makes you feel.
If you make your meal at a time when you really focus on what you are doing in the moment, you can find an island of calm in your busy day. Your bowl is an oasis, free from the outside world. You can put your cell phone in the other room.
If you must eat on the run, you can eat it from a jar as you ride the bus reading texts. It will still be a bowl of healthy, real food.
Main dish bowls are a lovely presentation of a balanced meal, with plenty of plants and nutritious sustenance. The layering and separation of foods with varying colors, textures, and flavors gives a bowl meal lots of variety, all in a comforting, easy format.
Your daily bowl can be as simple as a bowl of leftover grains, topped with whatever vegetables are in your fridge, some leftover beans or seeds, and a drizzle of tamari. You can customize a grain-free or low-carb base by prepping Sweet Potato “Rice,” Cauliflower “Rice,” or even Zucchini Dice or “Noodles.” Or you can branch out with one of the recipes in this book and make a bowl with exciting flavor combinations. You can even make a dessert bowl with chocolate. (You know chocolate is a health food, right?)
On the go? You can build your bowl in a storage tub or wide-mouth mason jar and tote it with you. Most of the bowls are packable, as long as you put the sauce on the side.
Pressed for time? Cook big batches of grains on your day off. Then you can easily put together bowls all week long. Cook one grain for all your breakfasts, and cook another grain for lunches and dinners. Or prep your sweet potatoes or cauliflower. Then you are good to go. You can pick out some recipes and use your cooked grain of choice to assemble bowls quickly. You may find that the dressings and sauces in the bowl recipes become favorites that you make and keep on hand for your own bowl improvisations.
Got a freezer? Cook big batches of your favorite grains, then cool them completely. Spread the cooled grains on a sheet pan, freeze, and then scrape into a zip-top bag. You can also portion them into 1-, 2-, or 4-cup portions so that you are ready for all your bowl needs. You can defrost them in the refrigerator overnight, or on the counter for a few hours, before microwaving or steaming to reheat. Ditto for cooked sweet potato “rice” or cauliflower “rice.”
Love oatmeal? Cook big batches of steel-cut oats, or any blend of porridge, and portion into half-pint or pint jars, top with frozen berries, and stash in the freezer. Take out a jar before bed and place it in the refrigerator to thaw. Microwave it in the morning for breakfast at home or toss the frozen jar in your bag and microwave it at work. Top with your favorite nuts, yogurts, cottage cheese … you name it.
Feeding a family? Try a bowl bar. Anytime you have a group of people eating together, you need a little flexibility to accommodate their personal tastes. A convenient solution is a bowl bar, with all the components in their own serving bowls. Everyone can compose her own meal. You can also make one big bowl food platter and let everybody scoop up a portion of your chosen combo.
All the recipes in the book make four servings, so you can mix and match dressings, sauces, toppers, and bases as you see fit. Just for two? Make a half batch. You can scale it down to one in many cases, too.
To aid in your creativity, I made the following template for you. Pick one bowl from each category for a customizable base of grains, noodles, or vegetables, topped with vegetables, beans, nuts, seeds, cheese, fish, or meat, and a sauce, dressing, or ladle of hot flavorful broth. If you want more protein, you can mix beans or nuts into the grain base, or pile your protein higher on top. If you are in need of greens, cover the bottom of the bowl with spinach or kale and let the warm grain base wilt them.
This book is packed with recipes for bowls that you can easily build into a successful dinner. But the bowl is a perfect place to improvise, too. Every bowl is made up of a base, toppers, sauce, and garnishes. Once you get the feel for it, you can customize your own personal favorites, or create spectacular bowls from what might seem like lowly leftovers.
Depending on your appetite, you can start with either ¾ cup or 1 cup cooked grain. Most of the meal recipes in this book call for 1 cup cooked grain per bowl. The dessert recipes are usually based on a smaller portion of grain, about ¾ cup. In cold weather, serve your grains warm, and in summer feel free to eat your bowls closer to room temperature.
To make your bowl life easy, cook grains ahead for the week. Decide whether you want ¾ cup or 1 cup grain per serving, and how many servings you will make that week. If you plan to make eight 1-cup servings of a quinoa-based bowl, cook 3 cups dry quinoa. You’ll have a little left over. While you’re at it, throw on some steel-cut oats to cook: For eight 1-cup servings, cook 3 cups oats. Once the cooked grains are cooled, store them in airtight containers and use them for breakfasts throughout the week.
Just to give you a ballpark idea of what’s in your base, here is a list of some mainstay base ingredients and their nutritional info. It’s easy to add them up in your head, and to get an idea as to whether you are getting a meal that meets your protein needs. The carbs in whole grains are the complex kind that burn slowly and keep you energized for a long time—not the blood-sugar spiking sweets to be avoided.
Instant Fixes: Precooked brown rice is available in foil pouches. Whole-wheat couscous is almost instant, as are some of the quicker grains, like quinoa and bulgur. Whole-grain pastas, especially thin ones like angel hair, can be very quick to prepare.
Now that you have your base, you need some proteins and veggies to fill out the meal. You may find that with all the protein in beans, nuts, and seeds, you can enjoy your bowl as a meatless entrée.
Instant Fixes: Just heat some chole, chili, baked beans, canned lentil soup, hummus or refried beans, marinated baked tofu, or seasoned tempeh to top your bowl—you may not even need sauce.
Instant Fixes: Canned fish are often packed in sauces or flavored oils. They are useful for a quick meal. Deli-sliced meats also make good choices, because they are easy to keep on hand. Seitan and canned mock duck are already cooked, ready to go.
For the recipes in this book, 2 to 3 cups of vegetables should fill your bowl. Add more leafy greens if desired. Think seasonally. Spring combos might consist of asparagus, radishes, and baby carrots. Summertime is perfect for spinach, cucumbers, tomatoes, and anything else just picked. Fall is the time of year to savor Brussels sprouts, sweet potatoes, squash, and kale. And wintertime is a good time to use root vegetables like turnips, parsnips, and beets, which can be complemented with immune-boosting garlic and ginger.
Wisdom from the ancients can guide your choices: Look to the Japanese tradition of using color to create a bowl. A Japanese meal is not complete until it contains five colors. Using the simple idea of adding something black, white, green, red, and yellow will make it easy for you to see whether you have a balanced meal. In Western culture we say, “Eat a rainbow,” which is also a color-based way to make sure you are getting enough variety in your plant selections. Don’t worry about getting too complicated, just put lots of colorful vegetables on the plate and you should be doing well.
Instant Fixes: Don’t feel like chopping? Salad bar vegetables from your local store, bagged precut veggies, and frozen vegetables are all easy ways to get veggies into your bowl.
Check out the condiments section of this book to make your own. You can also flip through the recipes and lift a dressing or sauce that looks appealing and use it on whatever you want to assemble. In a pinch, you can use your favorite bottled dressings, hot sauces, and condiments.
For dressing amounts, a good rule of thumb is 2 to 4 tablespoons per bowl. For vegetable- and fruit-based sauces, think in terms of half a cup per bowl.
Instant Fixes: If you are crunched for time, you can grab some prepared hummus and thin its consistency down with water for a savory drizzle. You can also use salsa from a jar, store-bought spaghetti sauces, or creamy premade salad dressings.
What’s missing in your bowl? Color? Crunch? Top a bowl with lots of greens. Add red chili sauce, salsa, roasted red or yellow peppers, shredded or julienned carrots, even canned water chestnuts.
Fermented vegetables provide a delicious counterpoint to all your other bowl elements, and they contain beneficial bacteria. Tuck some kraut, kimchi, or another probiotic-rich ferment on top of your bowl—and make a healthy habit of it. Sea vegetables are another fantastic add-on, giving you a mineral-rich hit of umami (meaty flavor) and salt.
Depending on your mood, your garnish can be classic parsley sprigs or basil leaves, or a heap of slivered chiles. A dollop of sour cream or yogurt might add just the touch of creaminess to set your bowl apart. Live a little, it’s just a tablespoon or two!
Now that you have all these bowl ingredient ideas, and a template for improvising your own bowls, the sky is the limit. Pick a few recipes to make in the coming weeks and get a feel for bowl food. Take a look at the mouth-watering photographs and think about ways to arrange your bowls. Break out of your tired, old eating habits; try a new grain or a new topping every week.
