Salmon Sushi Bowl for 3

However, one meal I've started making for myself recently is a salmon sashimi bowl. It's kinda like a mash-up between a poké bowl and chirashi-zushi, but majoring on the fresh salmon. I only do these on the weekends when I can get to the good fishmonger that sells sashimi-grade fish.

I start by cooking sushi rice, and seasoning it with rice vinegar, mirin, salt, and sugar, before letting it cool. I love how Japanese sushi rice sticks together in delicious little clumps; the texture is divine!  

Sushi Rice

Salmon sushi bowl for 1

I love it because it tastes amazing, is cheaper than buying the equivalent amount of sushi and sashimi at a restaurant (although raw salmon is always going to be a bit of a splurge), and of course you can just use the exact amount and type of toppings that you like. All killer, no filler. (I basically just want salmon, not tuna, or prawns, or tamago or whatever).

It's also definitely an achievable home dish. Proper sushi making is serious business involving years of training, and I wouldn't even bother attempting to make nigiri sushi or maki rolls at home. But this sushi bowl is achievable and forgiving. If you can find a good fishmonger that sells sashimi-grade fish, you're halfway there. (Also, ask them to slice it - they have the sharp knives and the expertise). I love sliced avocados, but if you don't have the patience, then I'm sure that roughly chopped cubes would be equally delicious.

Although I typically make this as a treat-meal for myself, earlier this month I made a big bowl for my mum's birthday lunch. She loves salmon, she loves avocado, and I knew she'd appreciate the pretty slicing and arrangement of the avocado and cucumber! Funnily enough, I decided on this dish a few weeks previously, while my parents were away in Penang. They returned home a few days before Mum's birthday, and in the car ride home from the airport, my dad regaled me with a story of how their favourite hotel lunch buffet had really gone downhill ("jato standard"), as they were no longer serving salmon sashimi for lunch and "they just want to save money and they're definitely going to lose a lot of customers over this, Sarah". (Woohoo, I'd made the perfect choice for the lunch!) I'm pleased to say they loved it!

Salmon sushi bowl for 1

The recipe below is for a large bowl that can serve four people (or three of my family members); scale down to serve fewer people. Enjoy!

Salmon Sushi Bowl
A recipe by Sarah Cooks; Sushi rice recipe from Allrecipes

Ingredients
1 cup sushi rice
1.5 cups water
1/4 cup rice vinegar
1.5 teaspoons vegetable oil
2 tablespoons white sugar
1/2 teaspoon salt
650 grams sashimi grade raw salmon, sliced
1/2 ripe avocado
1/2 Lebanese cucumber
To serve: soy sauce, pickled ginger, wasabi

Method
Rinse the sushi rice under cold water until the water runs clear. Place the rice in a heavy-based saucepan that has a tight-fitting lid, and add the 1.5 cups of water.
Place the pot on a high heat and bring to the boil. Turn the heat to minimum, clamp on a lid and allow to cook for 20 minutes, until the water is absorbed and the rice is cooked. Allow to cool slightly.
While the rice is cooking, place the rice vinegar, vegetable oil, white sugar and salt in a small saucepan. Bring to the boil, stirring occasionally, until the sugar dissolves. Set aside and allow to cool.
Pour the vinegar mixture into the rice and stir with a fork until the liquid is evenly distributed. It will seem quite wet but will dry as it cools.
Scoop the rice into a large serving bowl and make the top nice and flat and even.
Place the bowl into the fridge and assemble once the rice is cold.
Peel and finely slice the avocado. Finely slice the cucumber.
Arrange the avocado, cucumber and salmon slices on the rice.
Serve with soy sauce, pickled ginger, and wasabi on the side.
Serves 3-4

Have you made this recipe? Leave a comment below! Tag me on Instagram @sarahcooksblog and hashtag #sarahcooksblog

Vegetarian Stuffed Capsicums

Oh my goodness, we are just barrelling towards the end of the year! Just over three weeks until Christmas! I hope your preparations are all underway! We'll actually be travelling over Christmas, so we've already done our Christmas lunch with the family (plus the bonus Thanksgiving dinner I told you about last time). I absolutely adore festive eating, but it's around this time that I start to crave vegetables even more than usual.

This recipe for vegetarian stuffed capsicums was one I created for Prahran Market's A-Team last month, and I think is a perfect wholesome vegetarian meal. In the mystery bag were some lovely organic lemons from Gippsland, a gorgeously fragrant bulb of fennel, a block of smoked mozzarella, and the cutest little capsicums ever! When I saw these, I knew I had to make something that showed off their shape. No way was I going to chop them up!

Mini Capsicums

My mother-in-law (now officially in law, woohoo!) in Germany often makes stuffed capsicums. (In a confusing turn of events, the German word for capsicums is "Paprika", and they're usually called "peppers" in the UK and the States). She stuffs them with a seasoned minced meat mixture and slowly cooks them in gravy. The lovely capsicum sweetness infuses the sauce and the meat, and it's really delicious. I wanted to echo her stuffed capsicums, but keep them both vegetarian and vegetable-filled.

I stuffed the peppers with a vaguely Tex-mex mix of rice, corn, beans and cheese, with some spring onion and parsley. I spiced the filling with a touch of cayenne and paprika (paprika the spice, not German capsicums...), and lots of salt and pepper. For extra nutritional benefits you could use brown rice or quinoa, but I'm a fan of good old plain white rice.

Rice stuffing

I cooked them in a simple tomato ragu - the type of sauce you'd use for pasta. You know the drill, cook some onion and garlic in olive oil, add tinned tomatoes and herbs, and simmer until thickened. I love this type of sauce, and I cook it all the time. Bonus: vegetables that don't feel vegetable-y, do you catch my drift?

Tomato sauce

So! You pop the little stuffed capsicums into the sauce and let them cook slowly in the oven. (Depending on the size of your capsicums you may have leftover rice stuffing - either spoon it around the capsicums into the sauce, or simply serve separately later).

Ready for the oven

The little capsicums will slowly soften in the heat of the oven, losing that intense freshness and cooking down into mellow sweetness.

Stuffed Capsicums

I really enjoyed this meal - it's approachable, healthy, comforting, and delicious - everything you want! Serve as it is or with a crisp green salad on the side.

Enjoy!

Vegetarian Stuffed Capsicums
A recipe by Sarah Cooks

Ingredients
5 mini-capsicums
For the sauce
1 tablespoon olive oil
1/2 onion
1 clove garlic, crushed
1 x 400 gram tin crushed tomatoes
1 bay leaf
2 sprigs thyme
For the filling
1/4 cup rice
1/2 cup vegetable stock
1 spring onion
1 tablespoon flat-leaf parsley, plus extra for garnish
1 x 125 gram tin corn kernels
1 x 125 gram tin red kidney beans
1/2 cup grated cheese
1/2 teaspoon paprika
Pinch cayenne pepper

Method
Preheat the oven to 190C.
Wash the mini capsicums, slice the lid off (but don't discard!) Pull out the seeds and membranes and discard. If the capsicums don't sit upright, slice a bit off the bottom to give it a flat base.
To make the sauce, heat the olive oil over a medium heat in a pan with a lid that can go from stove to oven (like a dutch oven, heh). Finely chop the onion and cook for 5 minutes or until softened. Add the garlic and cook for a minute or two. Add the crushed tomatoes, half-fill the empty tin with water, swill it around and add it to the pot. Add the bay leaf and thyme sprigs. Season generously with salt and pepper. Simmer for 5 minutes, turn off the heat and set aside.
To make the filling, place the rice and vegetable stock in a small saucepan, bring to the boil, then clamp on a lid, turn the heat down to lowest and cook for 15 minutes. Take off the heat, remove the lid and fluff with a fork. Allow to cool sightly and turn the rice out into a mixing bowl.
Chop the spring onion and parsley and add to the rice. Add the corn, beans, cheese, paprika and cayenne pepper. Season generously with salt and pepper and mix to combine.
Spoon the mixture into the capsicums (don't overfill), and arrange the capsicums into the sauce. Place the lid on each capsicum, and place the lid on the pot. If you have extra rice mixture you can spoon it around the capsicums into the sauce, or serve separately later.
Bake for 50 minutes with the lid on. Remove the lid and bake for a further 10 minutes.
Garnish with extra flat-leaf parsley.
Serve with salad and bread.
Serves 3-4

Have you made this recipe? Leave a comment below! Tag me on Instagram @sarahcooksblog and hashtag #sarahcooksblog

Chicken rendang nasi lemak

As promised, here's my recipe for chicken rendang! I wish I could say it was a secret family recipe, handed down from my amah, but I actually just found it on Pinterest. (Are you on Pinterest? Do you follow me? I'm constantly pinning random ideas for dinner parties and cakes to bake. Exciting times!) Rendang isn't something my mum cooks regularly, so she didn't have a go-to recipe - she's more of an egg curry, chicken curry kapitan and loh bak kinda woman. So, when I decided to make chicken rendang, I just searched for it on Pinterest and found a recipe that looked good and had clear pictures of the ingredients. Most Malaysian recipes I see are targeted, obviously, for cooks in Malaysia, with access to typical Malaysian ingredients, and assume a level of familiarity with the ingredients and these types of recipes that I just don't have.

• Dried chillies - what size, what type? 
• One piece ginger - HOW BIG IS THIS PIECE? 
• 1.5 cup grated coconut & 1 cup water, mixed & squeezed to make santan (coconut milk) - Come again?
• 20 shallots - seemed excessive, until I realised it meant 20 cloves of those small red shallots!

Silken Tofu Rice Bowl

Hey hey! I am so happy to have a new Meal Prep Monday post for you today! I haven't been meal prepping much at all lately - my routine's pretty much gone out the window. As I keep telling you, I've been crazy busy at work, and also had a cold for a little while, plus there's been lots of general changes at work and at home! (It's finally started to calm down at work a little, but instead of getting back to the gym and getting on top of the chores, I've prioritised socialising with friends. I know, I'm a terrible person). I wish I could say that I've been revisiting old meal preps, or resorting to my basic tuna-salad-brown-rice combo, but really I've been buying lunch frequently, and occasionally bringing leftovers if we had any, (and in those cases, it's mainly been Sandra cooking).

However, I got organised last weekend, and I am super pleased with the Meal Prep that I made. We've got a silken tofu rice bowl, with marinated silken tofu, edamame, coleslaw, cucumber, pickled ginger and baby spinach, on a bed of brown rice and quinoa. Boom! Vegetarian! Vegan! Gluten free! High in fibre! Vegetarian protein! Lots of brightly coloured vegetables! Super nourishing and so tasty! We can do this!

I was inspired to make this meal prep from the Macro Bowl on the new Spring/Summer menu at Thr1ve (not sponsored). The other day I needed to buy a quick lunch to be inhaled, alone, at my desk. I wasn't feeling particularly enthused about lunch (I know, weird), there was nothing particular that I was craving, and just needed something to eat, so I figured it may as well be healthy. Well, I picked the Macro Bowl at Thrive (and it happened to come with a free ready-meal that day, wahey!), and I was surprised by just how good it was! It had a brown rice/quinoa base and lots of different vegetables, but the kicker for me was the tofu. The silken tofu came in a soy-based marinade, and it reminded me of my beloved Chinese silken tofu dishes (silken tofu with avocado; silken tofu with century egg) that I like to make for friends and family.

Macro bowl at Thr1ve

So, with that idea as my starting point, I put together my own meal prep for the week. I threw this one together very easily - it looks fancy but is basically an assembly job, and all of the ingredients are available at my local supermarket. (Not all supermarkets stock edamame, but they're usually available at Asian grocers and sit perfectly and patiently in the freezer).

Have you made this recipe? Leave a comment below! Tag me on Instagram @sarahcooksblog and hashtag #sarahcooksblog

Salted peanut rice Krispie treats

I've told you before that I like to keep some wholesome sweet treats on hand for pre-gym snacking. This is mainly to prevent fainting at the gym (it's happened, and it's embarrassing) and help me to work out harder, but also to break up that long long stretch between afternoon tea and dinner. Since last year's peanut butter granola bars I've slacked off a bit on making them myself, usually having some fruit or whatever random sweet snack I've got lying around at home.

In fact, a couple of weeks ago I was Googling "healthy pre-workout snacks" on the way home from work, and was totally going to make a banana smoothie, until I got home and saw... OOH PIZZA SHAPES! You can guess what happened next. Hah! (No regrets).

However, Sandra recently joined a gym and has been getting super into health and fitness. In addition to working out heaps, she's made a few batches of different wholesome snacks, and has also been testing out different protein powders, commercially made protein snacks and so on. She's inspiring me to lift my game, both at the gym, and in the all-important Gym Snack department.

Enter these salted peanut rice krispie treats! These are basically a riff on a Donna Hay recipe - bars made of puffed rice, nuts and chia seeds, held together with a delicious combo of peanut butter and honey. I replaced her suggested almonds and pistachios with pepitas and salted peanuts. Pepitas because I had them in the cupboard, and salted peanuts because they are my new favourite thing. After the runaway success of my peanut butter granola, I now want salted peanuts on EVERYTHING, all the time. (Have you made the granola? You must!)

Ingredients

In my view, salted peanuts are the perfect choice for these bars because the peanuts echo the peanut flavour in the peanut butter. (Say "PEANUT" again, Sarah!) I do suppose you could try this with another nut butter of your choosing, but for me peanut butter is the ultimate of all the nut butters. I have a habit of buying fancy nut butters at farmers markets, but take forever to finish them. My true love is clearly peanut butter! I go through peanut butter like nobody's business, and usually have about four jars on the go at once. (In case anyone cares, I think Darryl's Fresh Roasted Peanut Butter is the best of all the peanut butters, but no snobbery intended here - I'm also partial to Kraft crunchy and Kraft smooth, and also Reese's peanut butter, with its disconcertingly smooth and airy texture and its strange ingredients list which include monoglycerides, molasses and cornstarch).

Anyway, here's the mixture!

Mixture

And pressed into the tin. (The baking paper overhang makes it easier to remove later). I do love how the green pepitas punctuate the otherwise plain-looking mixture.

Mixture in tin

And now drizzled with chocolate! Milk chocolate is my favourite so I went with that, dark chocolate would work well too. (And incidentally, if you replaced the honey with maple syrup and used a vegan dark chocolate, you could easily make these vegan!)

Chocolate drizzles

I found that these were slightly crumbly, so some parts were a bit difficult to slice. In the recipe below I've suggested refrigerating them for at least two hours (I only did one hour, impatient!), and also weighting them down with a plate and some heavy cans or jars, to really compress them. Another option would be to add an extra few tablespoons of extra peanut butter and honey, so there's more sweet sticky cement to hold everything together. (I'd go with the longer refrigeration-weighting-down option though, because I thought the flavours were just perfect the way they were, and I wouldn't want to make it sweeter!)

Salted peanut rice krispie treats!

These are excellent pre-gym snacks, and from experience, I can tell you that they make a pretty decent breakfast too. (It's been a hectic week). I believe these could be frozen successfully, but I got through them so quickly that they never made it to the freezer. I shared some with my colleague Jimbo, who pronounced them "freaking delicious". I tend to agree! The salty-sweet-crunchy-chocolatey combo is a total winner! Enjoy!

PS I have lots of different gym snacks up my sleeve now and am super pumped to be making more gym snacks! Watch this space.

Salted Peanut Rice Krispie Treats
Adapted from Donna Hay

Ingredients
3 cups puffed rice
1 cup salted peanuts
1/2 cup pepitas
1/4 cup chia seeds
1/2 cup honey
1/2 cup smooth peanut butter
100 grams milk chocolate

Method
Place the puffed rice, salted peanuts, pepitas and chia seeds in a mixing bowl and stir to combine.
Place the honey and peanut butter in a bowl and microwave in 30 second bursts, stirring each time, until warmed through and runny.
Add the peanut butter mixture to the dry ingredients and mix to combine.
Line a 20cm square tin with baking paper. Tip the mixture in and press down firmly. Place another piece of baking paper on top and weight down with a plate and some cans or jars.
Refrigerate for at least 2 hours or until firm.
Melt the chocolate in the microwave or in a double boiler.
Remove the slice from the fridge, and drizzle with the melted chocolate. Refrigerate again until firm.
Cut into bars to serve. Store in an airtight container in the fridge.
Makes one 20cm square

Have you made this recipe? Leave a comment below! Tag me on Instagram @sarahcooksblog and hashtag #sarahcooksblog

Green rice bowl!

Good morning to you all! New meal prep Monday post for you today! We've got a vegan green rice burrito bowl. It's spicy green rice, frijoles negros, roast sweet potato and pumpkin, zucchini and carrot noodles, tahini sauce, boiled broccoli and sliced avocado.

The basis of this meal is a fab herby green rice, which I found on the blog Cookie and Kate. Rather than cooking the brown rice in plain water, it's cooked in a pungent mixture of spinach, coriander, jalapeño, onion and garlic.

Green rice

I love how ludicrously green the cooking water becomes.

Green rice cooking

Ta-dah! Brown rice can be bland, so this is a great way of infusing the rice with lots of flavour. What a great idea!

Green burrito rice

The components

For the other ingredients, I went with a vaguely Mexican theme - good old frijoles negros, sliced avocado, and spicy roast sweet potato and pumpkin. And I added some boiled broccoli and spiralised zucchini and carrots, because vegetables. And some tahini sauce, because everything is better with tahini!

We'd actually been to the market that day with a friend of ours who wanted to start meal prepping too, and we bought heaps of vegetables to cook together! (Her meal prep included grilled teriyaki chicken, Chinese broccoli, pickled ginger, pickled cucumber, zoodles, some of the roast sweet potatoes/pumpkin, pickled ginger, and plain brown rice).

Vegan Green Rice Burrito Bowls

As I was putting the bowls together, I realised that this was an accidentally vegan meal. With heaps of different vegetables (are we doing the 10-a-day thing?), fibre-filled brown rice, protein from the black beans, and healthy avocado fats, all in the one easy-to-eat bowl!
Roast Sweet Potato and Pumpkin
Preheat the oven to 220C. Peel a small sweet potato and cut into 2-cm chunks. Peel a similar sized piece of pumpkin and cut into the 2-cm chunks. Place the pieces into a baking tray. Drizzle with a little olive oil and season with cumin seeds, paprika, salt and pepper to taste. Stir to coat the vegetable pieces evenly. Bake for 15 minutes or until soften and lightly browned.

Tahini Sauce
Mix together 2 tablespoons tahini, 1 pinch of sugar, 1 pinch salt and a squeeze of lemon.

Frijoles Negros (Black Beans)
Heat 1 teaspoon olive oil in a small saucepan. Add 1 diced onion and 1 minced clove of garlic. Cook until softened, approx. 5 minutes. Tip in one 400g tin of black beans (liquid and all) and cook for 5-10 minutes, or until heated through. Add a pinch of cayenne pepper and a small handful chopped fresh coriander and stir through.

Zucchini & Carrot Noodles
Wash 1 small zucchini and trim the edges. Peel 1 small carrot. Put through a spiralizer. (Alternatively, grate the zucchini and carrot, put them through a mandolin or just julienne them finely with a sharp knife).

Lunch

I follow The Guardian on Facebook, and a couple of weeks ago their feed was suddenly full of articles saying that scientists have increased the recommended five servings of fruit and veg a day to ten - articles from a health perspective, an economic perspective, roadtests, examples of people who already eat the recommended amount, meal plans, recipes, tips on how to get your 10-a-day and many more. It was all over the place! I found all of these very interesting, but my favourite article was this one, by Dale Berning Sawa, explaining that by adopting a Japanese style of home cooking - rice with lots of small sides - it is easier to get up to ten a day. She also included lots of quick and simple vegetable-based recipes to get you started. Very inspiring for my meal prep!

I don't actually keep track of how many servings of fruit and vegetables I eat a day, but any time I can get in some extra vegetables, the better! (I made this when we'd just come back from Castlemaine with a big haul from the farmers market, so it was a great way to use up lots of the different fruits and vegetables that we'd bought.)

So, using this approach, this week's meal prep includes salt-grilled chicken, sweet potatoes with soy butter, and Japanese spinach salad, with a simple tomato-and-basil salad, plain shaved cucumber and rice to balance out the strong flavours of the first three dishes.

Japanese Meal Prep

Have you tried shioyaki before? This is a classic Japanese way of grilling meat. Literally it means "salt-grilled", and in my opinion is so much nicer than the ubiquitous teriyaki. When I was a teenager, I found a recipe for tori no shioyaki (salt grilled chicken) in an old Japanese cookbook that my mum had, and have cooked it many times since. When writing this post, I did a quick search and couldn't find any recipes for it online, and unfortunately you can only occasionally find shioyaki at restaurants here. (If you can find gyu-tan shioyaki, salt-grilled ox tongue, you must try. It is The Best). Luckily, tori no shioyaki is really easy to make. Just marinate your chicken pieces in sake and lots of salt for a few hours, then fry or grill. The sake tenderises the meat and makes it super succulent. I used chicken thigh fillets for this, but you can use whatever cut you like. You could also cut the chicken into little pieces, thread them onto a skewer and barbecue - great for parties!

Tori no Shioyaki

This sweet potato dish is a version of a Bill Granger recipe for soy-butter potatoes, where you toss boiled potatoes through a mixture of melted butter, soy sauce and a little sugar. It's really, really good. For reasons I will never fathom, regular potatoes are counted as a starch, not as a vegetable, but I thought that sweet potatoes would take well to this treatment. Turns out that they do! Woohoo.

Soy-Butter Sweet Potatoes

This spinach salad is a common side dish in Japanese restaurants - cooked spinach with a dressing of sesame seeds, mirin, and soy sauce. I love spinach, and something this deeply green just has to be good for you.

Goma-ae - Sesame Spinach Salad

I actually made enough food for four lunches, but I only have two sets of these containers, so that's why there are only two in the photo. (Sandra bought these Prepd containers from Kickstarter ages ago, and they happened to arrive after I got into meal prepping. How convenient!)

2 x Japanese Meal Prep

This was a great meal prep - I loved the variety of different dishes, and it kept well throughout the week. I found it nourishing but not heavy, and of course I got to feel really smug that I managed to fit so many vegetables into my lunch.


Tori no Shioyaki (Salt-Grilled Chicken)
Take 4 boneless, skin-on chicken thighs and pat dry. (Optional, grate a little fresh ginger and rub it onto the skin). Sprinkle the skin with 3/4 teaspoon salt. Place the chicken pieces into a shallow container and pour sake over to cover. (Hot tip for non drinkers and the budget conscious: Lots of supermarkets sell cooking sake, which is cheaper than proper sake from a bottle shop). Allow to marinate in the fridge for an hour or so. Remove the chicken from the fridge, discard the marinade, and cook the chicken pieces in a hot frying pan or grill until cooked through and golden brown. Allow to rest on a chopping board before slicing thickly. Garnish with nanami togarashi and spring onions.

Sweet Potatoes with Soy Butter
Adapted from Bill Granger's Potatoes with Soy Butter, Bill's Everyday Asian
Peel a large sweet potato and chop into roughly 2.5 cm chunks. Cook in boiling salted water until just tender, then drain. (You will cook the sweet potatoes more later, so don't overcook). Place the sweet potato pieces into the still hot, but now dry, saucepan, and add 25 grams butter, 1 tablespoon soy sauce and 1.5 teaspoons caster sugar. Stir to combine. Place on a medium heat and cook for 5 minutes, stirring gently, for about 5 minutes or until the liquid is absorbed. Garnish with black sesame seeds and chopped spring onion.

Horenso no Goma Ae (Japanese Spinach Salad)
Adapted from Salu-Salo
Cook 200 grams of baby spinach leaves in salted boiling water for one minute, then drain and refresh in a bowl of iced water. Drain again and squeeze out at much water as possible. Form the cooked spinach into a rough log, then cut into four pieces and set aside.
Mix together 1/2 teaspoon mirin, 1/2 teaspoon sake, 1 tablespoon roasted white sesame seeds, 2 teaspoons soy sauce and 1/2 tablespoon white sugar. Stir the spinach through the dressing and serve.

Korean-inspired Meal Prep

Well, hello there! It's Monday again, and you know what that means - another Meal Prep Monday! Today's meal prep is inspired by Korean flavours. We have a base of brown rice, with marinated steak, broccolini namul, julienned carrots and finely shaved cucumber. Plus a little garnish of extra sesame seeds, fresh coriander, chilli and spring onions.

Recipes are down the bottom of this post, but let me talk you through the elements right now. The beef was two beautiful steaks, marinated in a mixture of soy sauce, sesame oil, garlic, spring onions and chilli.

Steak marinade

Frying the steaks

Normally I like my steaks very rare, but because I was planning to eat it over four days, I decided to cook it through.

The marinade was based on Nigella's black and blue beef (from Forever Summer), and is really delicious. Knowing that brown rice is kinda a black hole for flavour, I decided to cook the marinade and use it as a sauce. Bonus!

Marinade being cooked

Ok, broccolini namul. I don't know a lot about Korean food, but as far as I can tell, "namul" is the general term for vegetables in a seasoned sauce. After Googling dozens of recipes, I decided to toss the cooked broccolini in a mixture of sesame seeds, sesame oil, garlic, soy sauce, sugar and salt. And boom - broccolini namul!

Namul mixture

All the ingredients

Of course, kimchi would be an obvious addition to this meal prep, but I had the cucumber and carrot sitting in the fridge, and wanted to use them up. Lots of crunchy freshness there! I'm also not always in the mood for punchy flavours of kimchi, so wasn't sure if I'd handle it for four days in a row.

Brown rice

I used brown rice for this, which was wonderfully hearty, but my preferred rice for this meal prep would have been Korean purple rice. I had a few packets in the pantry, but unfortunately they were out of date. D'oh! Next time, next time.

This was such a great meal prep! Lots of different vegetables and textures, and it kept really well throughout the week. I ate it cold, straight from the container, but you could always keep the raw veggies separately and heat the rest up.

Speaking of which, on the Thursday, I felt like something else for lunch (the nasi lemak craving was strong that day), so took the last lunchbox home. I picked out the cucumber and carrot, microwaved the beef, rice and broccolini, then reunited it all in a bowl and topped it with a fried egg. Delicious!

Korean rice bowl with a fried egg

Seared Beef