Kitchen Sink Foods - Buddha Bowl
These are real-time ingredients that were left over in my fridge from a particular dish or nearing its freshness deadline. Naturally, your contents will differ, but it is simply to serve as a template of what can be created from mismatched ingredients:
Ingredients:
3/4 Jar of Tomato Paste
1/2 box of pasta sauce
Handful of Spinach
Assorted herbs
1 Cup Wild Rice
Garlic Cloves
Pine Nuts
Corn Cob
2 Carrots
2 Summer Squash
1 Sweet Potato
Handful of Broccoli and Cauliflower Florets
10 Cherry Tomatoes
2 Vegan Flatbreads
2 links of Field Roast Vegan Sausage
I love to take an extra moment to roast my vegetables. It imparts a more complex and satisfying flavor in the final product. I pick what will be roasted (for this dish, I will omit the tomatoes, basil, spinach and pine nuts from the heat), make sure everything has a loosely uniform cut for even roasting, lightly dress with algae oil, salt, pepper. Set the oven to 465 degrees (I don't know why, it's just my go-to) and let everything develop a rich, deep flavor. I check after about 30 minutes or so; I don't want to over-roast, in order to retain a vibrant color and texture to the vegetables. There will be more heat through later, so best to under-roast than to go over.
While the vegetables are roasting, I prepare the wild rice with vegetable stock in a small pot, which gives the rice a richer flavor than adding additional salt.
Once the vegetables are out of the oven and the wild rice prepared, it is time to assemble. Rice, roasted vegetables and the fresh garnishes that I've set aside for color and texture, including the tomatoes, spinach, basil, parsley, thyme, Field Roast, and pine nuts. I also dressed the bowl with balsamic glaze, already on hand. Of course, everything is better with avocado, but since this is a real-time challenge to use what was already available and I am out, I will have to remember to add them to my grocery list for next time.
Enjoy!