Rice and bean salad bowl

This is essentially a three-bean salad over brown rice topped with salad toppings and a dressing.A viable lunch, at any rate.

Rice-and-bean salad bowl

Adapted from Martha Stewart Living, April 2017. I would love to link to the original recipe, but so far I don't see it posted online. But here's a link a bunch of other likely looking lunch salads from MSL that I'll have to try.

Ingredients

1¾ cup garbanzo beans, drained (1 can)

1¾ cup red kidney beans beans, drained (1 can)

1¾ cup black beans, drained (1 can)

¼ cup chopped fresh parsley

¼ cup chopped red onion

2 celery stalks, diced

¼ cup olive oil

5 tablespoons lemon juice, divided

3 cups cooked brown rice*

¼ cup tahini

1 garlic clove, minced

2-3 tablespoons water

1 cup shredded red cabbage

½ cucumber, thinly sliced

1 roasted red pepper, sliced

1 cup watercress

1 avocado, peeled and sliced

Method

Combine beans, parsley, onion, celery, olive oil and 3 tablespoons lemon juice. Season with salt and pepper. (The bean salad mixture can be refrigerated at this point until you’re ready to assemble the rice bowls.)

Mix tahini and garlic with 2 to 3 tablespoons (or more) water as needed to make a pourable dressing. Season with salt and pepper.

Put ¾ cup rice in each of 4 bowls. Top with ¾ cup bean salad (you’ll have some leftover). Top each with a quarter of the cabbage, cucumber, red pepper, watercress and avocado. Drizzle on dressing.

Rating: Not bad. Nice bean salad, and nice mix of crunch on top to offset all the soft textures. It was better with the tahini dressing, which I forgot to take the first day. It’s a heavy enough dressing I just added it to the bowl at home after that since it wasn’t likely to get the ingredients soggy. Quite filling.

*My favorite way to cook brown rice is in the oven. It makes less of a potential mess of your stove top, doesn’t require vigilance and yields consistent results. This method comes from Cook's Illustrated: Put 1½ cups brown rice (or a mix of brown and wild rice) in a 9-by-9 baking casserole. Sprinkle with 1 teaspoon salt. Heat 2 1/3 cups water and 1 tablespoon butter to a boil and pour over rice. Cover with tin foil and bake at 375 degrees for 1 hour. Remove from oven and fluff rice. Cover and let sit for another 5 minutes. (The first time you uncover the dish, the rice might seem to stick to the dish, but that 5-minute rest takes care of that. Clean-up might look daunting, but the seemingly begrimed pan cleans up nicely.) If you’re using a pan with a lid instead of tin foil, I up the amount of liquid to 2½ cups water. This yields about 4½ cups cooked rice.