Lunar New Year 2022: Year of the Tiger. Chinese Healthy Bowl Recipe
Lunar New Year 2022 has arrived! The year of the tiger 🐅 I made a healthy bowl to celebrate. Healthy Bowl, Buddah Bowl, Nourish Bowl,…call it however you want. I call it simply “bowl”. The thing is that it’s the easiest way to eat healthy food and a lot of nutrients in just one meal.
I wanted to celebrate, as of course is tradition, Lunar New Year 2022. And what’s the best way to celebrate but food?
I improvised a quick stir fry with quinoa, which is lighter than rice or noodles. Why I want a lighter meal? Because I’m using cabbage which is already a bit tougher to digest. Whenever we celebrate we tend to eat things that are digesting in our gut for hours. Going easy with the quinoa, balances the effect of the cabbage.
One sentence I say all the time is: “The sauce is the most important thing in a recipe”. Change the dressing and you change the experience. This healhty bowl is Chinese only because of the sauce. You could actually change the sauce and instead of celebrating Lunar New Year, you’d be celebrating I don’t know what celebration.
I love how versatile these healthy bowls are. You can grab whatever you find at home and then add the sauce and there you go: Happy Year of the Tiger! Well, the chilli sauce may be guilty here.
Of course it needed some spices there, tigers are fierce. But you can make it milder, the tiger can sleep for a while.
If you don’t want to use tofu for any reason, a great substitute for this healthy bowl would be chickpea tempeh. It’s a bit more firm than tofu and I love it. I just couldn’t find it in the store. But I’m glad I didn’t because silky tofu was magical for this recipe. I love how everything always turns perfect in my recipes, even if I don’t want to 😂
This bowl isn’t vegan, but only because of the oyster sauce. You can easily swap for teriyaki sauce. Again, I didn’t have it at home when I made the recipe, but it will combine perfectly.
Whatever ingredients you choose, make sure you add something crunchy. Like roasted almonds or slightly cooked broccoli. The toppings must be cold to add contrast to the warm base. Also, tofu can be cooked, but in this case I loved the soft touch of the cold tofu. Try it, it might surprise you!
What are the intentions for this New Year? I always make a list of intentions with the New Moon, but whenever it’s Lunar New Year it feels even more important. I’ve got a lot of projects going on, so focus would be a great word for this cycle in my case.
Lunar New Year Healthy Bowl
Ingredients
- 1/4 white cabbage sliced
- 1 medium onion
- 1 cup cooked quinoa
Sauce:
- 1 garlic clove grated
- 1 thumb ginger grated
- 2 tbsp oyster sauce (or teriyaki if vegan)
- 2 tbsp Rice wine
- 2 tbsp Rice vinegar
- 1 tbsp Chinese five spice
- 1 tsp chilli oil
Toppings
- 150 gr silky tofu
- 100 gr red cabagge (grated)
- 1 handful almonds (roasted)
- 1-2 scallions (chopped)
- 1 handful curly kale
Instructions
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Mix all of the ingredients for the sauce, until well combined.
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Use half of the sauce to marinate the tofu cut in cubes
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Chop the onion and the white cabbage. Cook separately.
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Mix together and add the cooked quinoa.
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Add the other half of the sauce mixture to the stir fry and cook for a bit, but not too much.
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Serve the stir fry on the bottom of the bowl.
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Add the toppings one by one: curly kale, chopped red cabbage, sacallions, tofu and almonds.
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Add a bit of the sauce from marinating the tofu on top and enjoy!
However you celebrate Lunar New Year 2022, I hope you are surrounded by the ones you love and that you feel grateful and loved wherever you are. Let me know how the recipe turned out! Have a great day, Year of the Tiger and life in general. Oh! And don’t forget to have fun and keep fooding.
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2 thoughts on “Lunar New Year 2022: Year of the Tiger. Chinese Healthy Bowl Recipe”
Great recipe!!! Happy New Chinese Year!
Happy New Year to you too! Thanks 🙂
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