Vegan dinners are admirably flexible. I sometimes like to think of them as the dinner plate version of a well-executed bento box: a little bit of this and a little bit of that. This is partly because there isn’t an obvious center to the meal, especially if you skip the tofu. Yet this Indian-inspired vegan meal actually mixes the bento approach with a real, non-tofu centerpiece, a lovely rice pilaf flavored with coconut, almonds, spices, and vegetables. To round it out, we start with another wonderful coconut-based dish, a carrot soup. And for extra crunch, there’s a pickled cabbage salad, which works as a cooling condiment. Pack leftovers into a bento box for lunch tomorrow!
