Smoked Salmon Tahini Bowls

One morning after I finished my yoga video via YouTube, one of the videos recommended to me was from the Kitchen Doctor, detailing some meals that he likes to make and pack for high protein, high fiber, nutrient dense lunches. The link is to the video, where he talks about how he likes to have ingredients in various categories, that he combines to make meals. Think whole grains, core protein, greens, extra veg, extra protein, and dressings. He made 3 combinations*, and we tried them last week. We liked all of them, but the Smoked Salmon Tahini Bowls were our favorite, and we had them again yesterday**. In the video, he uses arugula in the recipe, but the recipe online has cucumber. We had it both ways, and the cucumber came out the winner, but it was very close.

If you are salmon averse (Nance), you could sub another smoked fish, or even chicken or tofu, though the smoked flavor was a big plus for us. A bonus for summertime cooking is that the only thing you need to cook is the quinoa or rice, everything else is just assembling. Super quick, and it didn’t heat up the kitchen. I had cooked the quinoa the day before, so just pulled it out of the fridge and let it come to room temperature. The recipe is here, and is a little different than the video. The recipe below is the way I made it, with double dressing, and no sesame oil, since he didn’t show that in the video. I don’t really have amounts…I just put together how much I thought we would eat. I bought 4 packages of 4oz salmon, and we used 2 of them and had leftovers.

This is the salmon that we used. Tasty! It sells around here for $7.99, but was on sale for $5.00 each if you bought 4, so I bought 4.

Smoked Salmon Tahini Bowls

Ingredients

• Quinoa (the recipe calls for brown rice, I subbed quinoa)
• Arugula or cucumbers
• Radishes, thinly sliced
• Edamame (I used frozen)
• Smoked salmon
• Kimchi (a tasty surprise in the recipe!)
• Chives
• Sesame seeds
• Tahini Soy Dressing
  • 4 Tbsp tahini
  • 2 Tbsp low sodium soy sauce
  • 2 tsp mirin or apple cider vinegar
  • 1 tsp maple syrup
  • a bit of water

Directions

Whisk together the dressing ingredients, using enough water to thin it so you can drizzle it nicely over your bowls. Assemble the first 6 ingredients (quinoa through kimchi) in bowls or on plates, drizzle with dressing, then sprinkle with chives and sesame seeds.

*The other two were a quinoa, spiced chicken, spinach, roasted red bell peppers, chickpeas/garbanzos, red cabbage, with a yogurt/harissa dressing, and spiced tofu, sweet potato, kale, black beans, and corn with a yogurt/garlic dressing. Both were good and we will have them again.
**Full disclosure – Ted and I had this again last night, but Maya wasn’t excited by it and made scrambled eggs with cheese instead. Maybe healthy dinner bowls 4 times in 2 weeks was once too many.