This is another recipe and guest post from the lovely Miss C.J. at Tumbling Gluten Free blog. Check it out! And if you like what you read, be sure to go check out her page (click here)!

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If you’ve ever eaten Japanese or Hawaiian, you may have seen this laid out; or perhaps marinating in the kitchen. Bloody brilliant! …what is it? Might have been your first reaction, unless you also grew up in Hawaii or Japan. In which case, you know it: it is the Poke Bowl.

It does not include pocket monsters.

Sushi seems to be the long-way-round as far as time goes on food prep.; and my friend who did grow up in Japan says her family made bowls, not rolls.

They were sushi ingredients, but heaped up and muddled in a rice bowl.  It’s a comforting food, and the flavors blend to create a mix of sushi with what one might describe as cold stew — pho. Except not. Not to mention it takes much less preparation than traditional sushi.

I’ve made half a dozen now, and never taken a photo — I enjoy it too much to break the time by photography.

But this is one Yumiko made (the one pictured in the heading):  It didn’t even include rice, just sesame seeds, cilantro, soy sauce (gluten-free) sprinkled over fresh Ahi Tuna.

A note on any sort of fish meal: Fresh-caught deep-sea fish make the dish. Visiting my mum a few weeks ago, I discovered she has an acquaintance known specifically as “Fisherman Bill” — and he is what he’s called. He brought in a boatload of fresh tuna — and the difference between fresh unfrozen untinned fish with the other is almost indescribable.

My youngest sister: “It doesn’t taste fishy. It tastes like food.”

We discussed the freshness, and came to the conclusion that that fishy, seafood taste we once associated with fish might be more about a food getting near the edge of the rancid, not a natural aspect of the food itself.

Catch ’em all: fresh.

There are two bowls I’ll toss recipes out for below. The first is my sibling’s favourite. The second is mine. Yumiko doesn’t like waiting for rice to steam, so she just heaps on the fish and vegetables.

Poke Bowl #1

Ingredients:

1/2 cup dry short grain japanese rice

1/2 small white onion

2/3 cup fresh tuna or salmon, raw

soy sauce (to taste)

sesame seeds (to taste)

1/4 bell pepper, julienned

1/2 persian cucumber, cut in rounds

1/2 cup fennel (bulb), cut lengthwise

2-4 leaves Baby Bok Choy

1 small carrot, julienned

1 scallion (sliced white to green end)

1 tbs roughly chopped cilantro

1/4 tsp dry ginger

dash pepper

1 tbs lemon juice (fresh-squeezed)

coconut oil or oil of choice

Directions:

Steam rice as directed. Slice onion and pepper. Set aside. Prepare scallion and cilantro and set aside. Cut fennel, Bok Choy, carrot, and cucumber; set aside.

When rice is cooked, use a small sauce pan or griddle and lightly saute onion with pepper in oil. I prefer the Trader Joe’s cooking coconut oil — coconut oil doesn’t burn at high heats. When onions are just translucent, turn off heat. Add ginger, coriander, and pepper.

Heap rice in a large rice bowl or on a standard dinner plate. Place fish either directly atop, or to the side. Sprinkle both with soy sauce and sesame, adding scallion and cilantro. I usually arrange the raw vegetables (bok choy, fennel, carrot, cucumber) on one side, and scoop the steamed onion and pepper over the other side, and then add the strips of kombu to the top.

It’s not only beautiful, it tastes amazing.

It’s satisfying, filling, with a bit of a kick with the ginger and a huge array of flavours from the deep smoky tuna to the light tang of raw carrot and onion.

Poke Bowl #2

Ingredients:

1/2 cup dry short grain japanese rice

2/3 cup fresh tuna or salmon, raw

soy sauce (to taste)

sesame seeds (to taste)

1/4 bell pepper, julienned

1/2 persian cucumber, cut in rounds

1 small carrot, julienned

1 scallion (sliced white to green end)

1 tbs roughly chopped cilantro

½ head fresh broccoli, separated, steamed

dash pepper

1-2 strips of kombu or kelp

Directions:

My little sister preps all the vegetables together, raw, except the broccoli. She steams the broccoli. Then she dumps it all in a huge rice bowl and digs in – with fork or chopsticks, whichever is nearest to hand.

She loves a huge dousing of soy sauce.

It’s a nourishing and taste-bud-tingling meal — one can always sub in whatever’s fresh or in season in the vegetable category.  But it’s also a whole bowl of whole food.  We do, I’ve learned, get our nutrition in a bit of a symbiotic way: all the pieces of a certain food neatly mix to help us absorb and nourish in a way that processed pieces of them don’t.

Apart, they don’t have the building blocks to stick to our ribs — or our guts, if we’re being scientific and accurate.

This is all the more important if you’ve got a gut that’s been damaged by celiac, or other health issues.

But simply on the fun side, this is a brilliant meal — and if you got to catch some fishes, catch ’em all — fresh.  Not many other recipes prove more emphatically that being gluten free is no deprivation (even if one does miss the occasional croissant).

C.J. Williams is a freelance writer and advocate for human rights. She has recently finished walking from Belfast to Dublin to support the Irish people in their commitment to protecting human life through all stages of development. When not blogging about her gluten free lifestyle on her blog, Tumbling Gluten Free, she writes for the GFAF Expo, and is completing final edits on a children’s book.