Buddha Bowl

I'm a little bit obsessed with Buddha bowls at the moment! We recently returned from Munich, where, fortunately enough, our hotel was a short stroll away from a lovely vegan cafe called Rebella Bex (you can find their website here). I was really excited about sampling some of their tantilising vegan fare, so when I saw that they served Buddha bowls, packed with a range of delicious-sounding food, I couldn't resist. Why have only one dish when you can have loads?!

When we got home, I set about creating homemade Buddha bowls for my family, and they've been loving them! The idea is to serve a small amount of each food so that you end up with a delightfully diverse range of dishes in just one meal. Then play around with the presentation to serve in an aesthetically pleasing way.

To make the bowl pictured above, I included the following:

1. Courgetti with home made vegan pesto (you can find my recipe here, but I didn't use tomatoes).

2. Chickpeas liberally seasoned with Arabic majboos spices and roasted in coconut oil until crunchy. Topped with a home made vegan raita.

To make the raita, simply place 1 cup of cashew nuts in your vitamix/food processor, add ½ cup of water, 1 tsp sea salt, 1 tsp apple cider vinegar, 1 tsp nutritional yeast and 1 small, peeled lemon, then blend until smooth. Pour into a bowl and add ½ small cucumber, peeled and very finely diced, and a handful of mint leaves, finely chopped.

3. Carrot and red cabbage coleslaw. Spiralise 3 carrots and finely slice ¼ of a red cabbage. Mix together in a bowl then stir through a portion of my homemade vegan mayonnaise (you can find the recipe here).

4.Sliced avocado.

5. Quinoa with roasted butternut squash (I used this recipe, minus the cranberries and chickpeas).

6. Garlic fried mushrooms.

It sounds like a lot of work, but it's surprising how quickly you can conjure something like this up because a lot of it is just preparing and mixing raw ingredients. The best thing is that there are always lots of leftovers, so you can have the same meal the next day with no effort at all, and it leaves a range of dishes in the fridge for the family to snack on when they're hungry!

Enjoy!