Brown rice bowl with tofu, mushrooms, ginger and wombok slaw

That’s it: I’m officially over chocolate for the next month at least. Even the thought of baking anything sweet makes me blanch a little. Easter was lovely and all that, and because of its lateness this year, it even collided with the Greek Orthodox Easter, rolled on into Anzac day (not a favourite holiday of mine but a public holiday nonetheless) to create a kind of long mega holiday. The result of this later, cooler Easter was that I seemed to bake a lot, things like these: spiced sweet potato rolls (really nice texture but needed way more spice), Maria Speck’s artichoke tart with polenta crust (completely awesome), and  two showstoppers: these Greek Easter Cookies (paschalina kourlarakia) from Magda at My Little Expat Kitchen, which were the absolute best dunking cookies and, maybe, the best cookie ever, full stop! These are way too good to just make for Easter and when I recover from my baking binge, I will certainly be making them again.

My second raging success was Laura Bush’s Texas Governor mansion cowboy cookies from Veggie Mama, which for the name alone are worth making. One of the guests at the party I took them to said they would have to make it into the top ten cookies of all time. I doubled the recipe back to its original Texas Governor’s mansion size for my great-nephew’s bigger-than-Ben Hur first birthday bash and they all completely disappeared. Warning: the original batch size made such a huge amount of dough, I had to mix it in my giant size stainless steel bread bowl. Then, because it was the holidays, there was pizza and more pizza. I have to get around to doing a post on pizza, not that my pizza is that fancy. I use this Jamie Oliver recipe, and it’s such a good reliable pizza dough. I don’t mean to boast but I have had a 10-year-old boy tell me that my pizza was worth killing for.

Anyway, after all that Easter egg excess, it’s time for a bit of re-balancing and what better way to bring a bit of balance back but with a bowl of brown rice and some fixings. This brown rice bowl with stir-fried mushrooms, ginger and tofu is one of my favorite recuperating meals. It’s got a lovely freshness and crunch to it with the wombok slaw, so I can it eat in the heat of summer or when I’m craving something fresh in the depths of winter. It’s a rice bowl for every season. It’s real recovery food: just the thing to get you in shape so you can face your next mid-winter chocolate bender.

Brown rice bowl with mushroom, tofu, ginger and wombok slaw

Adapted from Karen Martini’s  Sunday Life Magazine column

• 1 cup of brown rice
• ¼ small wombok (Chinese cabbage shredded)
• 5cm piece of daikon (white radish) or a small carrot cut into matchsticks
• ½ bunch of chives, cut into 4cm pieces
• 2 green onions sliced diagonally
• 1–2 tablespoons of olive oil
• 6 large Portabello mushrooms, quartered and sliced thinly (a combination of oyster and shitake mushrooms if you have them is also good)
• Sea salt and freshly cracked black pepper
• 180 grams of pressed silken tofu, sliced
• 4cm fresh ginger sliced into matchsticks

Dressing

• 3 tablespoons toasted sesame seeds
• 4 tablespoons tamari (wheat free soy sauce)
• 3 tablespoons of rice vinegar
• 2 teaspoons raw sugar
• 4 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil

1. Rinse rice and place in medium size saucepan with 2 cups of water, add some salt, bring to simmer, cover and cook on low for about 30 to 35 minutes until surface of the rice pocks on top and water has evaporated.
2. Combine wombok, daikon or carrot, chives and green onions in large bowl and set aside. Mix together all dressing ingredients apart from sesame seeds and set aside.
3. Heat olive oil in fry pan or wok, add mushrooms, season with salt and pepper and toss in oil until browned and tender. Add ginger stir through then add sliced tofu and gently toss through mushrooms, cook until flavors meld about 1 minute.
4. To serve, mix sesame seeds and dressing through wombok, spoon rice onto into large bowls, top with mushrooms and tofu, then add slaw spoon some extra dressing over rice and mix through.

Serves two.

Vegan and gluten-free