I was speaking with a friend about writing cookbooks a few weeks ago. Because of my healthy eating mentality, I read a lot of vegetarian restaurant cookbooks looking for a balance between gourmet and budget-friendly recipes that taste good and don’t take a year to make (unlike fermenting the chili peppers), but also don’t just call for a ton of bottled sauces – tamari, black bean sauce, and rooster sauce in absolutely everything is not going to convince me that a chef deserves a James Beard award. James Beard would certainly agree.
One of the most respected vegetarian cookbooks to come out in the 21st century (2001 to be precise), the book style has been copied by Toronto’s Fresh restaurant (that somehow has 3 cookbooks for their one, chain restaurant whose menu changes very irregularly). This is not to be confused with the vegetarian resort cookbook trend that includes the Tessajara cookbooks, the Whitewater trilogy, and Hollyhock. ReBar, a Vancouver restaurant, like Fresh in Toronto and Aux Vivres in Montreal has a fast, cool, hipster kind of ambiance. Aux Vivres is a bit more bohemian than the others. Fresh has gone a little more upscale and appeals to many non-vegetarians (as in most of my friends I lived with in Toronto would either order take-out from Fresh or from Springrolls – two vastly different food concepts).
But I’ve still never been to reBar in Vancouver. I had a friend who’s a much better cook than I am, though, who made me a meal from this book once and swore by all the book’s recipes. After the meal, I was pretty convinced. She ate dairy, though, and I didn’t, so when I finally bought the book, I found there were a fair number of recipes I either couldn’t make or had to adapt.
But the other day in Montreal I went to Aux Vivres and had one of the big bowls of brown rice, steamed or sautéed or pickled vegetables named after Buddha or macrobiotics or dragons and the like, and remembered why these places became popular in the first place – they’re all about big flavours, lots of colour, and fairly big portions to convince you you’re not just eating leaves (though Aux Vivres stopped giving as much rice, I think. They were giving too much before for most people, though, so it’s a good change for most).
If you’re going to take out the meat and appeal to more than the yuppie yogi crowd, you need some tongue appeal. These places generally believe in refined sugar and lots of fat (flavour, after all), but the point is they taste good. And the recipe books are generally very accessible. It’s not hard to mix together a peanut sauce, since everyone and their great-grandmother has a bottle of soy sauce sitting in their pantry.
The other nice thing about these bowls of rice topped with veg and sauce (and also usually a choice of tofu or tempeh), is that you can take the sauce and put it on top of anything – any vegetables, or even meat. Peppers, celery, onions, avocado (raw, not sautéed), sauerkraut, spinach, kale, and cauliflower all work well. Often you can even use the sauce a marinade. And after one dinner of marinated daikon, sweet pickled carrots, seaweed and sprouts at Aux Vivres, I was craving more Buddha.
So I made the Mount Fuji Stir-fry sauce from reBar and put it on top of a bed of brown rice and grilled zucchini, broccoli and summer squash with tons of garlic and ginger. The dressing is miso-based, so you don’t want to cook it with the vegetables or the good bacteria in the miso will die. Drizzle a little on top and use the rest as a dipping sauce. It’s pungent and a little goes a long way, as it should with high-salt sauces. I skipped the grilled tofu, but if you think that’s an accessible source of flavourless protein, go for it.
DIY-Buddha Bowl with Sautéed Zucchini, Broccoli and Miso-Sesame Sauce
adapted from rebar modern food cookbook
2 tbsp miso (any kind is fine, but preferably an unpasteurized one without alcohol in it as a preservative if you’re going for health and not just taste)
1 1/2 tbsp water
1 tbsp soy sauce (gluten-free tamari for the celiacs)
1 tbsp sake (or mirin)
1/2 tbsp toasted sesame oil
1/2 tbsp minced ginger
1 clove minced garlic
1/8 tsp red chili flakes (or other crushed dried peppers)
Stir-Fry
1 tbsp toasted sesame oil
2 cloves garlic, minced
1/2 tbsp minced garlic
2 zucchini, cut on the diagonal in 1/4″ pieces
1 summer squash (yellow or light green and white), cut on the diagonal in 1/4″ pieces (or another zucchini)
1 head broccoli florets (you can also thinly slice the tender green stems but avoid the tough bottoms)
4 cups cooked brown rice (or other grain)
Directions:
Combine all dressing ingredients in a medium bowl. Set aside. Cut vegetables and then heat 1 tbsp toasted sesame oil in a large skillet, wok, or pot on medium-high heat. When hot, add garlic and ginger and sauté for 30 seconds, but don’t let the garlic brown or burn (this is why a wok is good, since the oil concentrates in the middle of the pot instead of spreading out thin and not coating the garlic).
Add the zucchini, summer squash, and broccoli florets and stir-fry until broccoli is softened, about 6-8 minutes. Try to get some char marks on the zucchini and broccoli by letting them cook without stirring for 30 seconds or a minute at a time. Be careful there’s enough liquid, though, or you’ll end up with hard burning instead of soft charring. Add water a tbsp at a time if the mixture sticks to the pot. Serve over brown rice and serve sauce on the side so you can either pour it over top or dip the vegetables in it.
Simple, light and delicious.
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