vietnamese-inspired grilled pork or chicken bowls
 The summer between George’s two years in business school, he did a one-month internship in Bangkok, Thailand, and I was lucky enough to get to tag along. It honestly feels like another lifetime, when we had no children and could just throw our entire apartment into storage and jet off to Southeast Asia for six weeks. I spent my days roaming markets and working remotely from charming little cafes all over Bangkok, and on the weekends we’d travel to places like Siem Reap, Chiang Mai, and Phuket. When the internship was over, we traveled on a shoestring budget through Vietnam, living off of mostly meat skewers from street vendors and banh mi from window shops as our sustenance. It was in Hanoi that I discovered the sweet, salty, funky joy that is Nuoc Cham, a Vietnamese sauce made up of fish sauce, palm sugar, citrus, and chilies. I’ve made my own version of that sauce using ingredients that are easily accessible in most grocery stores, which is why I’ve used the words “Vietnamese-inspired” in my title versus nuoc cham, and it’s the star of these bowls! For a protein, you can use pork tenderloin, chicken thighs, or chicken breasts — whatever you’re in the mood for, or whatever you already have and need to use up from the fridge/freezer. See the notes section below the recipe for how to cook even more protein options. Serve your meat over rice with just the cucumber-avocado-ginger salad and sauce, or see all of the optional toppings ideas to make it more of a build-your-own-bowl party! Oomph the rice: I went with plain rice for this recipe because the sauce will add plenty of flavor. But if you want to oomph things up, coconut rice (or coconut ginger rice) would, of course, be wonderful here. I just can’t write it into every single recipe, but know that I often want to! Brown butter scallion rice would also be fabulous, and you could thinly slice an extra scallion or two and add them to the cucumber salad. Make it a salad: Serve the chicken/pork and cucumber salad over a bed of mixed greens, using the sauce as your salad dressing! 10/10 suggest adding mango and chopped toasted peanuts or cashews.Make it a spring/summer roll bowl: Use shrimp (see notes below recipe) and serve the shrimp and cucumber salad over rice vermicelli noodles and mixed greens instead of rice. Add any of the optional toppings here, too. Basically, anything that would be inside of a Vietnamese rice paper roll, but in a bowl instead of messing around with the rice paper. Make lettuce wraps: Grab a head of butter lettuce and wash and separate the leaves. Stack two leaves on top of each other and fill them with several tablespoons of chopped meat, rice (or omit the rice if you don’t want it!), and toppings (highly recommend something crunchy like peanuts for this). You can add the cucumber salad to your wraps, or serve it on the side. Drizzle liberally with sauce and dig in! Add peanut sauce: This nuoc cham-inspired sauce is definitely a really unique flavor — sugar, fish sauce, chili paste, lime juice… I LOVE nuoc cham, and many of you will, too. But if you make it and aren’t totally sold, still use it to marinate your chicken or pork in it, but then for your bowl sauce, make peanut sauce (scroll down in this post — you’ll see the formula). Oomph the rice: I went with plain rice for this recipe because the sauce will add plenty of flavor. But if you want to oomph things up, coconut rice (or coconut ginger rice) would, of course, be wonderful here. I just can’t write it into every single recipe, but know that I often want to! Brown butter scallion rice would also be fabulous, and you could thinly slice an extra scallion or two and add them to the cucumber salad. Oomph the rice: I went with plain rice for this recipe because the sauce will add plenty of flavor. But if you want to oomph things up, coconut rice (or coconut ginger rice) would, of course, be wonderful here. I just can’t write it into every single recipe, but know that I often want to! Brown butter scallion rice would also be fabulous, and you could thinly slice an extra scallion or two and add them to the cucumber salad. Make it a salad: Serve the chicken/pork and cucumber salad over a bed of mixed greens, using the sauce as your salad dressing! 10/10 suggest adding mango and chopped toasted peanuts or cashews. Make it a salad: Serve the chicken/pork and cucumber salad over a bed of mixed greens, using the sauce as your salad dressing! 10/10 suggest adding mango and chopped toasted peanuts or cashews. Make it a spring/summer roll bowl: Use shrimp (see notes below recipe) and serve the shrimp and cucumber salad over rice vermicelli noodles and mixed greens instead of rice. Add any of the optional toppings here, too. Basically, anything that would be inside of a Vietnamese rice paper roll, but in a bowl instead of messing around with the rice paper. Make it a spring/summer roll bowl: Use shrimp (see notes below recipe) and serve the shrimp and cucumber salad over rice vermicelli noodles and mixed greens instead of rice. Add any of the optional toppings here, too. Basically, anything that would be inside of a Vietnamese rice paper roll, but in a bowl instead of messing around with the rice paper. Make lettuce wraps: Grab a head of butter lettuce and wash and separate the leaves. Stack two leaves on top of each other and fill them with several tablespoons of chopped meat, rice (or omit the rice if you don’t want it!), and toppings (highly recommend something crunchy like peanuts for this). You can add the cucumber salad to your wraps, or serve it on the side. Drizzle liberally with sauce and dig in! Make lettuce wraps: Grab a head of butter lettuce and wash and separate the leaves. Stack two leaves on top of each other and fill them with several tablespoons of chopped meat, rice (or omit the rice if you don’t want it!), and toppings (highly recommend something crunchy like peanuts for this). You can add the cucumber salad to your wraps, or serve it on the side. Drizzle liberally with sauce and dig in! Add peanut sauce: This nuoc cham-inspired sauce is definitely a really unique flavor — sugar, fish sauce, chili paste, lime juice… I LOVE nuoc cham, and many of you will, too. But if you make it and aren’t totally sold, still use it to marinate your chicken or pork in it, but then for your bowl sauce, make peanut sauce (scroll down in this post — you’ll see the formula). Add peanut sauce: This nuoc cham-inspired sauce is definitely a really unique flavor — sugar, fish sauce, chili paste, lime juice… I LOVE nuoc cham, and many of you will, too. But if you make it and aren’t totally sold, still use it to marinate your chicken or pork in it, but then for your bowl sauce, make peanut sauce (scroll down in this post — you’ll see the formula). If you aren’t already in love with build-a-bowl style meals (the general composition of which is a delicious protein + a tasty grain + a perfect sauce + flavorful toppings), I’m confident you will be after cooking this dinner! Here are a few other fan favorites from the archives to try — or revisit — this summer: beef bulgogi bowls, tandoori chicken bowls, and beef basil bowls. Serves 4 to 6 Cook time: 30 minutes active, plus 30 minutes to 12 hours inactive (for marinating the meat) Tools: