Cookbook Review: Doctor Bowl
Context: I’m a vegetarian with two young children. I like spice, tofu and vegetables, but my children don’t always like the first and last of these. I love to bake and everyone in the house will eat cake very willingly. I work and weekday evenings can often be busy, so we try and keep midweek meals reasonably simple.
Doctor Bowl by Dr. Divya Sharma
My youngest and I have been visiting our localish libaries. He loves buses and books, and whatever midday activity our libraries are putting on, and I love to see if a different library has cookbooks I’ve not yet seen.
I’ve followed @doctorbowl on Insta for a while, but I‘m not sure if I’ve ever made anything from her account… maybe some baked oats; I have three of her baked oats recipes bookmarked and I have made some baked oats, but I don’t know that it’s any of the ones I have bookmarked. Her posts tend to be a bit on the wholesome side and whilst I might be tempted for me, my family generally only eat porridge for breakfast. BUT… the photography in this book was beautiful, and it was mostly on that basis that I took this one home for a while.
First impressions: This is such a clean looking book. The photography is straightforward but bright (lots of colours from the fruit and veg) and really appealing. The recipes all feel approachable, and it’s all vegetarian. Flicking through I found plenty of things that I would be tempted to eat, and a few that I thought might have family appeal.
What I made:
- Indian-Spiced carrot salad (page 82, recipe): one of my kids chose this one, as he’s a big carrot fan. It’s easy to prep (as long as you are happy grating/have a food processor attachment to do this for you) with few ingredients that you probably mostly have in the fridge/cupboard. I mostly stuck to the recipe but dialled back the coriander a touch as my kids tend to pick out any green leaf they find in a dish. Overall, the salad was pretty popular and everyone ate some. However, one of my kids felt that the lemon was very prominent and made it a bit too sour. I liked it, but would need to scale it back if I were making it for just me (the recipe says it serves 4 and we found that, as a side dish, it easily did two adults, two kids + leftovers).
- Crispy gnocchi traybake (page 107): We’re a big fan of baked gnocchi dishes from Rukmini Iyer (Crispy gnocchi with mushrooms, squash and sage) and Ruby Tanoh (Gnocchi with harissa butter and broccoli, recipe), so this seemed right up our street. Although this recipe didn’t say to do so, I soaked the gnocchi in boiling water for a couple of minutes (and then drained) before using it as this is a step in other baked gnocchi dishes we’ve tried. We really liked this traybake. Very easy to prep, and then it sits in the oven for 40 minutes; perfect for a weeknight. Both kids merrily ate the vegetables in the dish, with the bigger one even daring to try some red pepper which he normally avoids once cooked (I never did get a verdict though). Quantity-wise it does serve four, but probably not quite generously enough if everyone comes to the table hungry — this is a general problem we have with a 500g bag of gnocchi though. Overall verdict — this dish will join our regular rotation, I’m 100% sure we’ll make it again.
- Mega vegan breakfast traybake (page 49): I doubled this and made some minor alterations based on the ingredients I had and our family preferences. Firstly, I only had half of one very large sweet potato, but I did have some leftover cubed squash and so swapped the second sweet potato for butternut squash. Second, I bought cheapy supermarket beans so wanted to add a little more flavour — I’d originally thought paprika but found two red chillis in the fridge so instead I cut a good slit through those and popped them in with the mushrooms. Third, I used baby spinach (the recipe doesn’t specify). The final alteration was unintentional, I initially forgot the tomatoes and had to add them later (about five minutes before the mushrooms). Of these tweaks, I think the first three were fine and the last one I hopefully won’t repeat but only resulted in tomatoes that weren’t quite falling off the vine. Effort-wise, this is very slightly more hands-on than the gnocchi traybake, but only because the ingredients go in at three different times; veg prep time is pretty similar and cooking time is the same. This isn’t a complex or groundbreaking dish (my husband was somewhat surprised that this was a recipe from a book rather than something I’d just made up), but it’s solid family comfort food and everyone ate most of it pretty happily (the kids picked out the spinach). I’m pretty sure we’ll add this to our weeknight cooking options, albeit under some other name — my kids were unaware that some people ate sausage and beans for breakfast.
- Korean tofu bites (page 135): I love Gochujang and don’t have so many recipes in my repertoire that use it (although for something a bit different, these New York Times cookies are great), but it definitely tends to result in dishes that other people in the house declare to be too spicy. In this case, neither of the kids would eat the bites, but both of us adults thought they was great. We served them with rice and they really needed a vegetable on the side, but otherwise made a decent meal. I’ll make this one again, but perhaps as part of a bigger selection so that the kids don’t just eat rice for dinner!
What I’m making next: There’s a good few probably family-friendly weeknight dishes in here, plus a few “wildcard” options where I genuinely have no idea how my family might receive them:
- Weeknight crowd-pleasers: We already have a go-to bean and cheese quesadilla, but it’s very kid-friendly food so I’m tempted to try the Smoky BBQ beans and quesadillas (page 42). I’m not sure what to serve them with yet, but I’m also pretty sure everyone would be happy with a side of Crunchy halloumi chips (page 136).
- Family-friendly weekend breakfast options: The Chocolate and peanut butter smoothie bowl was one of the first things to draw me to this book and would make a Sunday morning treat for everyone.
- Slightly more risky: The Crushed cucumber salad (page 64) is the salad I thought my big kid would pick when he instead opted for the carrots. Apparently, he doesn’t want his cucumbers crushed, but I’m still tempted to try this one. Cauliflower generally pleases everyone, so the Cauliflower steaks with chimichurri (page 43) would work for us adults and the kids can skim the “green leaf dressing” (although she also suggests drizzling the chimichurri on pizza — I wonder if I can get away with that. Finally, the Aubergine and chickpea bake (page 120) is all ingredients we love, but history tells me that this doesn’t always guarantee success.
- Definitely more risky: The Lentil and sweet potato fritters (page 48) could be very popular or very unpopular, I’m not sure! I’m not a fan of deep frying (all that oil to either dispose of, or siphon off and store for next time), but I’m still considering it as a possible option. Finally, my family’s tolerance for spice is variable, but I love both the flavours of a chaat so the Sweet potato chaat (page 130) are probably going to get made sometime soon.
Would I keep this book on my shelf? Probably not. This was fun to flick through, but my shelves are crowded and there wasn’t that much that I’d be tempted to make that was far enough from what we make already. But… the list of things to try next is longer than the ones we’ve actually tried, I need to make a few more bits before I rule this one out.