Spinach or kale, an avocado, green onions, a nub of fresh ginger. Put these in your basket the next time you’re at the grocery, and a healthy dinner is only as far away as cooking rice. Thanks to Melissa Clark of the New York Times for the 5-star springboard recipe: Quinoa Rice Bowl with Kale, Kimchi and Egg. What I love about this recipe is that everyone can create their own bowl from an assortment of prepared ingredients. If you’re making several bowls, you might want to swap the hardboiled eggs for a big pan of scrambled – much easier to keep everything hot and served at the same time.
Mix up the dressing in a small jar – it’ll be enough to drizzle over at least 6 bowls. Double the recipe and stash it in your refrigerator to simplify things next time (which will be at least once per week, if you’re like us). This dressing is also great for chicken salad or something like this White-Cooked Chicken dinner.
Ginger-Soy Dressing
Ingredients
- 3 tbsp vegetable oil with a neutral flavor like peanut, avocado, or canola
- 3 tbsp soy sauce or tamari
- 2 inches fresh ginger, peeled then grated with a microplane grater or finely chopped
- 1 tbsp rice vinegar, unseasoned
- 1 tbsp sesame oil
- optional: 1/2 tsp sugar or honey
Instructions
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Whisk together all ingredients in a glass jar. Drizzle a tablespoon over your composed rice bowl. Store an extra dressing in refrigerator.
Stuff for your bowls. Let everyone assemble their own. Choose from this list or try the NYTimes recipe above:
- rice, quinoa, or other grain; cooked
- briefly steamed kale or spinach; sometimes I cook some Annie Chun potstickers for the same meal and steam the greens in the same pan with the potstickers
- sliced green onions
- avocado slices
- eggs; soft or hard boiled, fried, or scrambled (all good!)
- kimchi
- leftover cooked pork, shrimp or smoked salmon
- roasted seaweed, cut into strips
- toasted sesame seeds
- drizzle with a tablespoon of Soy Ginger Dressing
