Rating: 💋 💋 💋 💋
And here we have a new section entitled: MK Can Actually Cook for Herself and Does Not in Fact Always Eat Out
Like, come on, my dudes. I love cooking almost as much as I love eating. They work well together, have to say, so I lucked out.
The first recipe I tackled for you I was very excited to try out. It's a bed of brown rice topped with a mess of vegetables, chicken, and a peanut butter-soy sauce. Everything about that has me written all over it. MK's first Buddha Bowl, let's gooo.
So, to start off, I boiled the rice, because that takes mad long (thirty minutes cooking, ten to steam). I knew that had to be step one so everything would be ready to go at the same time and my veggies would have a foundation to lay on.
From there, I had to preheat the onion to 425, then clean and chop up a large sweet potato. This was actually very intimidating for me, because I had never cooked a sweet potato before and didn't know if there were any special tricks you are supposed to know when approaching them. I still don't know. What I do know is, I survived the washing and peeling and chopping unscathed, so if there are sneaky tricks, I skated by on sheer dumb luck. I am not arguing with that!
Next came the red onions. Sigh. Onions are a serious point of conflict with me. On one hand, they are absolutely delicious and I am a firm believer in adding them whenever relevant to bolster the flavor, onion breath or not. That is what toothpaste and mouthwash are for, ladies. Anyway, the issue we've got firmly placed on the other hand is that onions consistently make me cry. This is the suffering a blue-eyed person must face, because then my tears are salty so they make me cry MORE. Once I start crying, it's hard to dam the flood. I hate crying and I hate onions for exposing my sensitivity. Jerks!
But onions are just so good...and so I fight my way through the pain.
Once the onion was diced (and my tears were dried) I added them to the baking pan along with the sweet potato, a tablespoon of Extra Virgin Olive Oil (rule of thumb: if it is not extra virgin, it might as well not exist), a pinch of salt, and a sprinkling of pepper. With twenty-five minutes left on the rice preparation clock, I popped the pan of veggies into the oven to cook so the rice and vegetables would all be ready at the same time.
From there, I measured out the two cups of spinach (a half cup per serving) and thinly sliced a whole avocado (a fourth for each serving).
From there I mixed together the peanut butter-soy sauce, which fused two of my favorite things in the world - peanut butter and garlic, with soy and lime for a little sour and honey for a little sweet. It was also supposed to have sesame oil, this is true, but I hunted high and low at multiple grocery stores and could not find it! Do better New York! I decided to not allow that to ruin my dinner plans, but be bold instead and make the bowl with a missing ingredient. I am just trying to be honest here, so you know this is a slightly adapted version of the OG recipe. I closed my eyes as I whisked, praying this would not be the undoing of the dinner I would have to eat for the next four days.
Meanwhile, I decorated the chicken with the garlic powder, ginger, salt and pepper, added a tablespoon of olive oil to a pan, and sizzled that chicken until it was nice and golden - about ten minutes. I chose to cook the chicken as cubes rather than whole breasts so that each side of the cube had a nice seal of oil on it while cooking. From there, the chicken had eight minutes to rest while the potatoes finished roasting and the rice spent ten minutes steaming, water drained from the pot, lid on to create a cute little rice sauna.
Once those ten minutes were up, I fluffed the rice and split it among a bowl and three Tupperware containers, then added in the spinach and avocado to one side and the potatoes and onions on the other, with the chicken nestled on top and the peanut butter sauce drizzled over the whole dish. After mixing it all up (post pic - that would NOT look as cute) I took a deep breath and took a bite. Look, I am sure the sesame oil enhances the dish, so I will try to get my hands on that for next time, but the Buddha bowl was not ruined without it. Onion versus sweet potato, spinach versus avocado, soy versus peanut butter and honey - the whole dish was a delicate pas de deux between salty and sweet, making salted caramel quake in its foil wrapper. The chicken and rice were the perfect neutral background to support the blend of personalities within the sauce and vegetables. I am extremely pleased with the whole situation.
My work schedule necessitates that I cook several servings of a dish on Sunday night, enjoy it fresh in the moment, and then eat leftovers throughout the rest of the week. For this 4-serving recipe, I created dinner for Sunday through Wednesday. I was a bit nervous about the remaining bowls holding up all week with the avocado. Some dishes fare better than others depending on the oils in the dish as far as preserving the avocado goes, and thank God that has been the case so far. I spend all day at work looking for that sweet six o'clock hour when I get to heat up my Buddha bowl in the staff kitchen and enter taste bud bliss. This bowl is seriously getting me through the week, you guys. Bless up.
Also, I feel mega healthy eating it because it does not stuff you uncomfortably, but is not one of those 'healthy' dishes that betrays you by leaving you starving an hour later. It is the perfect blend of whole grains, lean protein, and vegetables to burn off slowly and provide good nutrients, but it is so yummy too. What's not love?
Try the recipe below, my dudes. It is making your girl very happy.
XX,
MK