Sequestration Meal #283

 

By now you know that bento-style bowls are my best comfort food in this seemingly endless quarantine. This one is rice with TVP bulgogi (recipe from Lydia's Flexitarian Kitchen), cucumber slices tossed with rice vinegar and salt with sesame seeds, and a few halved grape tomatoes.

I was inspired to make TVP bulgogi because of this post from My Cat Loves Daiya. I knew it wouldn't exactly be bulgogi but I figured you could get close, and even if you didn't, it would still taste good. I was pretty much right. This TVP bulgogi really didn't seem that much like bulgogi to me because it had red pepper flakes in it and the spiciness overpowered the flavors, but I will know next time to just leave that out. I also only used about half of the soy sauce because it seemed like a lot of soy sauce and I think that was right; if I'd added more it would have been too salty for me. I look forward to playing around in the world of vegan bulgogi.

I would also imagine that soy curls might lend themselves to bulgogi, but bulgogi itself is always sliced really thinly, and soy curls seem like they'd be too thick. But maybe there is some seitan out there one could use. And yet this is gluten free and that would not be, so if you were avoiding gluten this would be an option whereas seitan would not. So many considerations and possibilities.

Here's to experimentation!