Mahogany miso cauliflower steak bowl recipe

The joy of having a couple of weeks off university recently meant that I was able to get back into the kitchen for once, and spend a bit more time actually making food for myself that doesn't involve putting something between two slices of bread.

After my recent experiments with bowl food -- which stemmed in no small part from acquiring Bowls of Goodness not so long ago -- I thought it was time to come up with a vegan bowl all of my very own. 

As far as I can work out, vegan bowls need a good base of carbs, some protein, and all sorts of veggies, arranged in such a way to show off their colours and give whoever's cooking far more work than they would otherwise have. I think this bowl has pretty much all of those elements. Plus, there's a good chance that this bowl counts as a good portion of your five a day.

This bowl is as good looking as my cooking gets - who doesn't love a bit of purple in their dinner? I've doubled up on purpleness by using red cabbage as well as black rice soba noodles (which should more accurately be called 'dark blue-ish, wait, no, sort of purpley rice soba noodles'). 

It's a sort of changing seasons bowl - the end of the wintery cruciferous cauli and cabbage, and the entry of the asapargus bridging late winter and early spring. The flavours are my favourite Japanese fallbacks of soy, garlic, miso and ginger. Hope you like it! 

Mahogany miso cauliflower steak bowl 
Feeds one hungry vegan

Ingredients
One medium carrot, peeled and cut into sticks
Two asparagus spears
50g red cabbage, finely chopped
1tbsp rice vinegar
1tsp of mirin
40g-50g of soba noodles
Half a teaspoon of sesame oil
Two large chestnut mushrooms, quartered
Drizzle of soy sauce
Two large cauliflower steaks

Ingredients of mahogany miso sauce
1tbsp of soy sauce
1tbsp of mirin
half a tbsp of white miso
1tbsp sake
4tbps of water
Squeeze of sriracha (optional)
One small garlic clove, finely chopped
Half a teaspoon of finely grated ginger
Half a teaspoon of toasted sesame oil

How you do it
Add the 1tbsp of rice vinegar and 1tsp of mirin to the red cabbage and leave to marinate. You can do this hours in advance if you want to. Or minutes, I'm easy.
Cook the noodles according to packet instructions, add the asparagus in 1-2mins before the end of cooking time. Once cooking time is up, drain the noodles and asparagus and refresh under cold water. Add the sesame oil and stir.
Warm up a generous amount of olive oil in a pan and cook the cauliflower steaks 5 minutes on one side, then flip over and 5 minutes on the other side.
(In the meantime, fry the quartered mushrooms. Once they're cooked, turn off the heat, add a small drizzle of soy sauce and stir.)
Flip the cauliflower over and add half the sauce, then after two minutes, flip back over and add the other half of the sauce.
Lay everything out in the bowl, and pour over any spare mahogany sauce.