Daily Dose of English 170
Poke Bowls
Daily Dose of English 170
Intermediate
Hey everyone, my name is Ben and you're listening to A Daily Dose of English. This is a short, simple podcast that you can listen to every day to improve your English. You can find the transcripts for all episodes and more on benslanguagelab.com. I'm glad you could make it today. In this episode, we're gonna be talking about poke bowls. Poke bowls or they look like they're spelled poke bowls. But poke is not an English word. It's a borrowed word. And so it kind of maintains sort of spelling and then it morphs itself to how we would pronounce things in English. Um, I don't know the exact pronunciation. I believe it's a Japanese word originally, but it's probably closer to Boke or something like that. But, um, all of the different sounds are going to change slightly to fit the English, um, phonology better. And the most obvious part of that is the A at the end, becoming this A sound instead of just an E or an E sound, which is more common in other languages. Because there are no English words that end in just E like that. It's always just A in some way, right? So yeah, that's sort of where the different pronunciation comes from, but let's talk about what they are. Um, there are relatively popular kind of food nowadays. A lot of poke spots have been popping up in the last, uh, probably decade, I'd say. Um, so yeah, about the mid 2010s until, uh, they're really popular more recently because of the rise of. I guess, I don't, how do I describe it? Especially in the US, there's been a lot more food chains that are healthier and more, and easier to eat and have more options. So these are chains like Chipotle, there's tons and tons of poke places. There's like all sorts of kinds of like do it yourself pizza places, Mod Pizza, something that comes to mind. What's the salad one, Evergreen or something like that? There's all these chains, like brands of food or even just like styles of food that have gotten a lot more popular because they're easy to do, they have really good margins, so that means that they're cheap for the business and they can charge a lot of money, so they make a good amount of money per person, that's a margin. and they're healthier than these sort of typical fast food that you might think of, right? So if you're going to eat a salad, it's definitely more healthy than a McDonald's cheap cheeseburger, even if it's sort of a similar style of how you make and eat the food. And so these, um, sweet green, that's the name, not evergreen sweet green, I think. And so this sort of style of food has gotten really, really popular in the past decade, I think. And pretty much everybody that eats that kind of food has a favorite or they have their own spots. I think the most popular one is Chipotle in the US, which is a, it's called a Mexican grill, but it's really, it's very American style Mexican food. It is good. I will say it is very good food, tasty. It's just, it's gotten very expensive. It's not like, amazing it's just good and it's very fast it's very it's always the same no matter where you go in the entire country and so i totally see the appeal of it and poke is a very similar idea i don't actually know of any like big chains that that do it all over the country i'm sure that there are some but there's typically sort of smaller ones that look all the same though. Cause it is, it is basically make your own pile of common toppings and eat it, right? That's the entire thing. Cause the poke bowl in the U S means that you have some sort of base, whether it's rice or noodles or something like that. Then you have a bunch of toppings and some sort of protein toppings or things like edamame, um, mango, uh, Come on, think of something. You got this, Ben. Various fermented foods. I have to like look at a picture. A cucumber. Yeah, poke bowl. Ah, I can't spell. Poke bowl. What is a poke bowl? Oh yeah, so cucumbers, that's one. Avocado, radishes. Tons of different fruits and veggies are on there, or can be on there, right? That's the thing, it's an option. Sea tuna? No. Seaweed? What? Sea tuna? What? Why did I say that? All that sort of stuff. And then there's usually some sort of protein, which is typically considered separate because it's more expensive, right? Usually salmon or tuna. actual tuna, I don't know why I said sea tuna, or some sort of vegetarian option, tofu for example. There's lots of different options for like how to make a poke bowl. And the fish is usually raw, and that's one of the core factors. And then at the end you also get some sort of sauce is usually the standard as well. So maybe like, I think a sriracha mayo is really common, but there's all sorts of different kinds of possible sauces. And so there are potentially millions of different options for a pokeball, right? It's not any specific thing that Like you have to get, it is always this way, right? Spaghetti carbonara has a specific recipe. Like it can be changed a little bit, but it's generally the same thing. But in the case of a poke bowl, it's more like the word, I don't know, like taco, where it's more about the method of eating and the kind of food it is rather than anything super specific. Oh, ginger's also great on them. And so, the reason I wanted to talk about this is because I started cooking myself some homemade poke bowls recently. They're not really poke bowls, they're sort of a, they're similar though, and they're really, really good. And I wanted to talk about them a little bit because I was watching one of my favorite food YouTubers on, well, YouTube, Internet Shaquille, definitely recommend you check out his channel. um and he was talking about this sort of poke bowl thing that he makes often and it's not super traditional poke because of one of the method of preparation and he steams the fish because that way you don't have to go and find the fish that's gonna taste absolutely perfect when it's raw, because that can be a little bit more expensive or a little bit harder to find. But you can get just regular normal tuna or salmon and steam it a little bit, and it's still got that texture of a little bit raw, but it is just gonna be more flavorful on the average bit. because you don't have to worry about it being super duper high quality. Just a little bit of cookedness is gonna sort of ensure safety and also make sure that the flavors really come out. Because I think that's the bigger thing in a lot of places. It's not really about safety of eating raw fish, it's more about flavors and wanting to. I'm not positive on that, don't quote me, but yeah. And then once you steam the fish with the rice a little bit at the end of the rice cooking, which makes it a nice like one process thing, and then you just add in a whole bunch of other toppings that you want. And so I do, let's see, do I have a picture of it? I can actually just talk about what I put on it. I know I put mango on there, cause I love mango and mangoes are delicious here. Let's see, I think I have a picture. That is a different, yeah, here it is. So I put cucumber, mango, ginger. Ooh, the salmon skin is really, really good. I love salmon skin, so I'll go get some salmon at the market. And for this, I'll say, hey, can you cut off the skin and give it to me? And then I'll fry up the skin in a frying pan and it becomes crispy and delicious. And then also edamame's on here. And then I just throw on the cooked fish and a simple sauce, which is like rice vinegar, some sugar, soy sauce, onions, and it's really, really good. And it has become one of my new favorite weeknight meals because it is relatively quick to make and the flavor to effort ratio is really, really high. It's so, so tasty for not that much effort, which is great and it's been a new favorite of mine and I will probably continue to eat it every week or so because it's great and it's a great way to also eat salmon, which I love. but it can be a little boring to eat just salmon and broccoli for example um and the nice thing is that when you order when you get like a relatively small portion of salmon it doesn't end up being that expensive right i think i got last time like a portion of salmon for uh i think it was like three or four i think it was like four dollars um and like that's very doable for salmon because salmon is expensive right it's a it's a relatively high priced fish but since you don't need that much because you're eating with rice and a whole bunch of other stuff the actual meal ends up being very economical you can say but um yeah it's definitely much better than going out to get poke because in the u.s at least you're looking you're starting at twelve dollars for the bowl and that's like low And so you're almost guaranteed to pay like 15 or $16 for a bowl. And I'm definitely making something for half that price and it's almost guaranteed to be better, which is really nice. And so yeah, that's one of the reasons that I like to cook is when you do find those sorts of recipes that are just so, so good and way more economical than going out to eat every day, but. Yeah, that's everything for today. Thank you very much for taking the time to listen to this episode. I hope that you enjoyed and learned a little something and I'll see you again tomorrow for another episode. Have a good one. Bye.
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