Tag: tempeh

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Vegan MoFo

Vegan MoFo Day 21: A Picnic by the Sea

I guess “teriyaki tempeh” doesn’t scream “beach picnic,” but who are you to judge me?

Above: Picnic lunch platter with teriyaki tempeh over brown rice, sesame cabbage slaw, steamed green beans, carrot sticks, ginger almond dip, and cherries.

Bright, colorful, filling–but not too rich, no no, wouldn’t want to interfere with sandy wanderings!

The only thing that relied on an actual written recipe was the cabbage slaw, and that came from Martha Stewart, of all places. It was all right–maybe a bit too salty? But it balanced all right with everything else on the plate. Plus I love chopping up cabbage super thin. Makes me feel like I have a knife skill. (Yeah, one.)

My teriyaki marinade is a haphazard thing I throw together in slightly different proportions every time. This one included ginger, garlic, whites of a scallion, soy sauce, mirin, agave nectar, and sesame oil, just enough to cover a container of uncooked tempeh slabs. It marinated overnight, then baked for about 40 minutes, or until most of the liquid cooked out. The result was super tender and flavorful (not to mention glossy and a pleasing shade of brown, perfect for insta).

For the almond dip, once again, I threw things in a food processor and hoped for the best: a handful whole almonds (unsoaked), fresh minced ginger, heaping teaspoon-ish of mild miso, eyeballed a tablespoon or two of tahini, agave nectar, rice vinegar, sesame oil, and finally water until desired texture is reached. I was aiming for a kind of hummus-y texture that would contrast somehow with the teriyaki and cabbage dishes. It was a bit thick, but decent as a dip for crunchy veggies.

Just for the record, we really did eat this on a picnic table at the beach. It was a lovely gray day and we were trying to find a state beach along the Monterey coast that wasn’t completely packed, and just lucked out at Pajaro Dunes.

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Food Blog Vegan MoFo

#VeganMoFo Day 29: A Recent Brunch

I make a “special” breakfast most Saturdays. Sometimes it’s waffles or pancakes, which only I like, but sometimes it’s savory, which K will usually eat too. There’s often toast, or roasted potatoes, but recently I made brunch with polenta.

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Or, okay, maybe it counts as grits? This is not my culture; I don’t know. Anyway, it’s polenta cooked with some fresh corn kernels for extra yum (also, using stuff up). Over that we’ve got tempeh cooked with spices, soy sauce, and liquid smoke, then smashed and browned a little with olive oil; collard greens, onion, garlic, and bell pepper got cooked down in the same pan. On the side, sliced tomato. Keeping it simple.

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Food Blog Vegan MoFo

#VeganMoFo Day 28: For Brunch, I’d Rather Be In Mendocino

I’m having a hard time right now, in life. I frequently daydream about things I’d like to be doing with time and money I don’t have. A common imaginary trip? Mendocino, California–particularly the Stanford Inn. I’ve had the pleasure of visiting it a few times now, and it is my happy place. Cozy rooms. Beautiful scenery. Charming town. Relaxing amenities. And, oh, the food. Vegan everything, especially the breakfasts.

While I can’t make it up to Mendocino right now, I can try to recreate one of their signature breakfasts: Grilled polenta, braised greens, and cashew sauce. Plus a side of tempeh.

For the tempeh and greens, I made a quick marinade with lemon juice, soy sauce, garlic, and a splash of liquid smoke, diluted a bit with water. I used half in a pan with shredded cabbage and baby spinach (what I had on hand) and the other half in a skillet with sliced tempeh and a few shakes of red pepper flakes. Cashew sauce was based on the “savory” recipe from The Kitchn. And the polenta I cooked ahead of time, then poured into a square baking pan to cool and solidify into something I could slice and pan-fry. (It was not perfect, though. Damn slices didn’t brown well and broke up when I flipped ‘em. Oh well. Next time, I’ll leave it to the professionals.)

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Food Blog Vegan MoFo

#VeganMoFo Day 10: Almost All Vegan Food Is Unconventional Already

What are our best secret ingredients, after all, but weirdo vegan secrets? Aquafaba? Nutritional yeast? Cashews that are not merely part of a snack nut mix?! Come on. Any one of these things will garner a raised eyebrow from most of your relatives, and that’s not even counting those who make a face at the mere thought of eating tofu.

One of those weirdo vegan ingredients that has gotten me questions in the grocery checkout line is tempeh. “What do you do with it?!” they ask. And I always answer: marinate, pan-fry, bake, or…crumble, simmer, and sauce. The latter feels more “secret ingredient”-y: tempeh marinara is delicious, easy, and one of my go-tos on nights when I don’t know what else to cook.

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Step 1: Dice up the tempeh and simmer it in a saute pan with red wine (about halfway up the tempeh pieces), splash of soy sauce, and some seasoning: oregano, thyme, red pepper flakes, crushed fennel seeds if you’re feeling adventurous.

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Step 2: When most of the wine is absorbed, smash the tempeh with a fork or potato masher, then add a little olive oil to help some of it brown a bit. This is also a good time to add onion, if you like.

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Step 3: Add crushed tomatoes or tomato puree (~24 oz. can or jar) and stir, then bring to a simmer while you wait for the pasta to cook. (Oh. You should’ve started some pasta water.) Toss in as many cloves of microplaned garlic as you can tolerate peeling as the sauce heats up. (If you don’t have a microplane or garlic press, just mince the garlic and give it a 30-second saute with the olive oil, before you add the tomatoes.)

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Step 4: Season to taste (salt, pepper, nooch) and consider stirring in fresh parsley or basil, if you have it. A handful of baby spinach or arugula also wouldn’t be out of place. Fold in your cooked pasta (you already cooked your pasta, right? And set aside some cooking liquid to revive it/unstick it if your timing wasn’t awesome?).

Step 5: Eat some pasta. Be glad you didn’t buy those weird faux ground beef crumbles instead of tempeh.

The tempeh could also be used, sans tomato sauce, as sausage crumbles in other applications, such as pizza topping. Ohhh, it’s good on vegan pizza.

I also recommend making your favorite version of a vegan parmesan. A lot of recipes call for roasting things, drying things, etc. but I am LAZY and I just put hemp seeds, almonds, and nooch in a spice grinder and let ‘er rip until it’s a nice powder.

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For my dinner, I used this sauce to make a baked penne dish with roasted eggplant and tofu-cashew ricotta, adapted from an omni recipe on Chowhound. The sauce is the same process, though I added some sliced onion at the crumble-saute step and about ¼ cup of chopped kalamata olives with the tomato sauce. I also did not layer the baking dish, but you could. Melty vegan cheese, if that’s your thing, would be a nice addition. It’s actually delicious even without baking, just sprinkled with nutty nooch.

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Food Blog

Sweet potato hash and tempeh bacon

I needed a hearty breakfast today. I was meeting up with friends for a hike, and I opted to let my favorite pre-hike brunches of the past inspire me: breakfast at Ravens in Mendocino. So I made a simple sweet potato hash with spring onions, green garlic, and red bell pepper, with a little arugula wilted in at the end for good measure. But protein was also required, so I marinated thick strips of tempeh in a thin broth with apple cider vinegar, soy sauce, minced garlic, tomato puree, hot sauce, liquid smoke, and a tiny bit of coconut nectar, then pan-fried them. A little of the marinade was drizzled over the hash to help the arugula wilt (and add flavor); more was added to the pan with the tempeh after one flip and allowed to cook all the way down, to better infuse the flavors.

The hike was worth it.

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Food Blog

Cajun-Creole-spiced tempeh with creamy grits and citrus broccoli salad

Tonight’s dinner comes from a cookbook I admire, but rarely cook from: Vegan Soul Kitchen by Bryant Terry. It’s just *cool* – but I find the recipes overly complicated for my style, and the instructions a bit dense. You really have to read all the way through or you’ll miss details. Certainly that means there’s something in there for me to learn, but I’ll admit I’m not always too eager to do so.

Admittedly, even here, I took a few shortcuts. I used a pre-mixed Cajun spice blend; I did not toss everything in a damn paper bag (all my paper bags are leftover from grocery shopping so they probably have bits of mushroom stuck in there). I halved the grits themselves and skipped the cashew cream in favor of a little extra almond milk (I know, OK? I know how to make cashew cream, I just wasn’t in the mood). I did take the extra steps with the tempeh itself as far as cooking it in broth, though I opted to use just enough broth that it would be all get absorbed rather than having leftovers to store. It resulted in a really nice, tender tempeh, which works really well here. This might be a good method for someone who isn’t super keen on the natural bitterness or texture of tempeh.

The broccoli salad was really easy: slice broccoli (I used a 4mm food processor slicer blade); blanch; marinate in a dressing made of lime, lemon, and orange juices; enjoy chilled. It was a nice, bright side for the rich and creamy grits. I’d probably double or triple the recipe for a summer picnic.

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Food Blog

Friday night’s all right for stir frying

Usually I like to eat out on Friday nights – it’s always been a long week, I’m always tired, I always get home later than usual. But, well – I’ve been home all day, and I have an excess of tasty vegetables. Why not save money and the frustration of deciding where to go and just cook?

It started with my standard last-minute recipe search technique: I had some beautiful fresh shiitake mushrooms and I was in the mood for tempeh, so I searched* for “shiitake tempeh stir fry.” Among the first results was this perfectly acceptable suggestion: http://www.onegreenplanet.org/vegan-recipe/shiitake-tempeh-and-kale-stir-fry/

Made a few modifications to account for the fresh mushrooms instead of her dried, partially because I hate dried shiitakes but mostly because, hello, beautiful:

But that was minor – subbed vegetable broth for the mushroom liquid in the tempeh marinade, and fresh for dry mushrooms in the stir fry itself. Easy.

After making the marinade and adding the tempeh, I threw a mix of sprouted red rice and plain long grain brown rice in the clay pot while everything else prepped. (This rice combination turned out especially good. I need to find more sprouted red rice.)

I didn’t think this was quite enough of a meal, so I decided to add a simple salad (just mixed baby lettuce) and carrot ginger dressing from the Isa classic Appetite for Reduction. I don’t know how I’d avoided making that recipe before–it is very tasty. I may have used more ginger than it called for, and I have no regrets.

* So until quite recently, I worked on Yahoo’s Search property. Since getting laid off, I decided to switch to another search engine, but feeling contrarian, I opted to set it to DuckDuckGo instead of Google. I know most people won’t care, but good lord, we could have a very long and likely boring conversation about search results.

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Food Blog

Baby kale and mushrooms, roasted tempeh cubes, hash browns, sliced tomatoes, coffee

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Food Blog

Soba noodles with green avocado sauce, tempeh, and cabbage-tatsoi stir fry

The sauce includes the following, thrown in a blender until creamy: 1 overripe avocado, splash of soy sauce, rice vinegar, and sesame oil, squirt of gojuchang, bit of green onion, handful of torn spinach leaves (to amp up the green), and a little water.

The tempeh was pan-fried in a cast iron skillet with sesame oil and soy sauce until brown, then I cooked the veggies (green cabbage, baby tatsoi, julienned carrots, green onions) with red pepper flakes in the same pan.

Maaaaybe a little too much soy sauce, but pretty good.

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Food Blog None Vegan MoFo

It started with a stalk of sprouts

I don’t usually like to get the stalks of brussels sprouts because the damn things already so much work to prep, but it called to me. I cradled it like a baby–a silent, green, nodule-covered, leafy baby. Mmm. And now you know too much about how my brain works.

So I prepared the brussels, starting with plucking all the sprouts off the stalk:

Then washed, trimmed, and sliced them all in half. This took a little over half an hour, as observed by watching an episode of The Meltdown with Jonah and Kumail. And…what next? Brussels are best roasted…need more veggies…how about the other half of the kari squash from the other day? And for color, those three purple potatoes that are probably still hiding in the fridge somewhere?

These colors don’t run. They get tender.

OK, sure. Good. But then? That isn’t a whole meal yet. Tempeh? Yeah, sure. Cast iron cooking. How about shallots? Definitely, throw those in there too. Needs a sauce (*points to blog name*) to tie it all together + make it not totally fricking bland. Tahini + hot sauce + apple cider vinegar + nutritional yeast, add water, shake it up.

Oh yeah. Pretty good.

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Food Blog None Vegan MoFo

Fabulous roasted purple cauliflower seasoned with oregano, red pepper, and nooch. Dino kale salad with shredded carrots, cabbage, and cherry tomatoes in an almond butter-garlic-lemon dressing. Pan-fried tempeh triangles with soy sauce. Yum.