Update (Apr 2023): Posts like these have moved to my new food-focused newsletter at
.For many nights so far this summer, dinner came in a bowl. The routine goes like this: Jason grills meat sometime over the weekend, then we use it up over the next three or four days to assemble some kind of bowl meal for dinner.
Each bowl starts with a bed of rice (usually white but sometimes brown or purple) or rice noodles, then we add: some of the batch-cooked meat (or a sunny-side-up egg if there’s none left), an assortment of vegetables (including many of the same sandwich ingredients, cut into chunks instead of slices, so like lettuce, tomato, onion, avocado, and cucumber), garnishes (garlic, cilantro, scallion, and lime), and whatever condiment(s) we’re feeling that night (ssamjang, Fly By Jing Sichuan chili crisp, sriracha, sambal, sesame garlic sauce). It’s a reliable formula for all those don’t-wanna-cook days.
Occasionally, one of the toppings will be slightly more special.
For example, we might make a salad of some sort and use it as a topping over multiple days...
… like a daikon and carrot salad (This bowl also had scallion, avocado, and lime juice, and the combo was so good, almost like a deconstructed California roll)…
… or a lotus root salad.
The same idea applies to stir-fries…
… like this improvised Sichuan sugar snap pea (key ingredient: doubanjiang).
And also Asian grocery this-and-thats...
… like five-spice tofu and chili oil picked cowpeas.
A bowl fashioned from Korean bbq ingredients always delivers.
Anyway, as I write this, we’re planning to have another bowl week. I feel like bowl living might only cool down when soup and stew weather returns. Or not — one bowl I’d like to play with this fall is Eric Kim’s sheet-pan bibimbap.
—
Thanks for reading and have a great week ~