--- See Donna Hay make her cauliflower rice bowl, along with other recipes using her tips and tricks to make everyday meals easier and tastier in Donna Hay Everyday Fresh, Thursdays 7.30pm from 16 September on SBS Food Channel 33. Episodes will be available at SBS n Demand for 30 days after they air. ---
It's little wonder that cuisines across the globe have their own version of 'the bowl'. You can cuddle up to a bowl of food. Eschew the table and nurse it gently in your lap while you chat or tend the fire, read or watch the telly. Bowls are nourishing and comforting and generally filled with good-for-you fare.
Take a trip with us across meal times and timelines to celebrate the simple joy that is bowl food.
Australian cauliflower rice bowl
This quick bowl - ready in about 15 minutes! - comes from Donna Hay. "My favourite new way to make cauliflower rice is to simply grate it on a trusty box grater. No need to drag out the food processor every time. It’s one of those things I wish I’d discovered sooner. So easy that I now make it much more often," she says. Here, panfried rice flavoured with garlic and oregano is matched with baby spinach and crispy eggs with chilli.
Palestinian soup
Soup is surely the original bowl food and is still the best way to eat a meal sans table. There's a soup for every season and occasion, but start with perfecting a few chicken soup recipes and you'll be most of the way there. Try this Palestinian soup first.
Mexican quinoa
The best bowls mix the crunch of raw ingredients with the flavour of cooked. This Aztec-inspired quinoa bowl does this so well - raw sugar snaps, zucchini, avocado and corn contrast with the chewy grains of quinoa. It's all smothered in a zesty chipotle in adobo and lime dressing.
Korean rice
If soup was the first, then rice was surely the second of the bowl foods. As proved by dishes such as this bibimbap, it just works. Like many of the bowl recipes, bibimbap has a long list of ingredients but is quite straightforward to pull together.
American pokē
The bowl-de-jour, pokē is a traditional Hawaiian raw fish. When served with rice and vegetables, you've got yourself a pokē bowl. It's the darling of the hipster set simply because the flavour just begs to cross-cultures and pair with pickled or fermented things like kimchi, seaweed and sauerkraut.
Indian curry
Millions of people across the world sit down to bowl food every night. In India, it's called dinner. Now, you could easily drown in all the amazing curry recipes available, but a fish curry like this one is a lifesaver.
Japanese chirashi
Bowls are fantastic for packing in plenty of nutrition, as this wild rice and wakame bowl proves. The thing about a bowl is that you can stuff it full of whatever you like then pour a specialist dressing over the lot. Here it's a sour umeboshi dressing that makes this entire bowl ping with life.
Italian pasta
Pasta has to fall under the "bowl food" banner, surely? Serving one big bowl of pasta for everyone to construct their own little bowls of pasta is the easiest entertaining solution around. You can't beat spaghetti alla carbonara for smashing in front of the box, but any of these pasta option would make perfect bowl food:
Thai breakfast
Every culture has some kind of bowl option for breakfast, including Thai khao tom gung, or rice congee. Congee is eaten for breakfast across Asia, as both a sweet or savoury dish. Another recent addition to the breakfast bowl phenomenon is the smoothie bowl, which is worth experimenting with:
Australian salad
Borrowing from every bowl recipe ever created, the ubiquitous 'salad bowl' is basically just a deconstructed sushi-pokē-pasta-rice mash-up. And it's pretty darn perfect.
SBS Food is a 24/7 foodie channel for all Australians, with a focus on simple, authentic and everyday food inspiration from cultures everywhere. NSW stream only. Read more about SBS Food
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