Tempeh Satay and Peanut Sauce

Last night we made Tempeh Satay and Peanut Sauce out of Robin Robertson's new cookbook, 1000 Vegan Recipes. We served it over some leftover white rice with garlicky dinosaur kale and roasted butternut squash. All in all, this was a pretty good meal.

The Tempeh Satay was just ok for me. Two things might factor into my less-than-wow review: 1) I couldn't get the tempeh I like, Lightlife soy or Lightlife 3 grain because Whole Foods was out of them. I had to settle for Westsoy brand soy tempeh (which I don't like very much). 2) I had recently made seitan chimichurri skewers from the Candle Cafe cookbook and those were amazing. I couldn't help but compare the two things as they are both skewery things that get marinated, cooked on the grill and served with a sauce. I know they are the same, but the Candle Cafe recipe knocked my socks off.

Don't get me wrong, it was pretty good and if you have the cookbook, it is worth trying.

Modifications: I modified the sauce a bit because I tasted it after blending and it tasted like coconut milk with garlic. So I doubled the chile sauce (used Siracha) and doubled the tamari and added another large blop of peanut butter. Then I added some water as it cooked because it was getting pretty thick. We skipped the skewers and just threw the tempeh right on the grill.

Tempehtations review

Lightlife put out a new product recently called Tempehtations. It is pre-marinated cubes of tempeh in three different flavors: ginger teriyaki, zesty lemon, and classic bbq. I wanted this be really great and to be the end to pre-steaming tempeh before cooking it.

I got the ginger teriyaki flavor and added it to a stir fry; served over mixed red and white quinoa. We browned the tempeh, removed it from the pan, stir fried vegetables and then added the tempeh back in near the end along with some sauce.



These tempeh cubes were just ok for me. If you don't want to chop up the tempeh and steam it and possibly marinate it, then this will work ok for you. It tastes alright. I'll just take the plain old plain tempeh. I like the plain because I can get it crispier when I brown it. I also had originally bought these to skewer and grill but the cubes were too small to grill.

There really are mushrooms in there!

Tonight's dinner was Swedish Tempeh Meatlessballs with steamed broccoli and maple glazed roasted butternut squash.

The meatless balls are Dan's tempeh meatless balls. The sauce is Joni's Swedish meatball sauce. The only changes I made include doubling the sauce recipe (it made a lot and I could probably have gone 1 1/2 times the recipe amt) and deglazing the mushrooms with a couple of tablespoons of white wine. The white wine added a really nice layer to the sauce. To make the dish easier to make, I made the meatlessballs, set them aside and reheated them near the end, just before serving.

If you've been reading this blog for a while, you'll know that I won't eat mushrooms. I'll cook with them, but I'll pick them out. My husband likes them and I don't mind the flavor. In the pic below it looks like there are no mushrooms in this dish. That was selective serving on my part. But don't worry, there really are mushrooms in this dish... 16 oz of mushrooms in fact!

It's been sooo long - Here is some food!

Man, it has been a long time since I have blogged anything. I've been taking pictures of food and then not finding the time to even get them off the camera. I finally uploaded the pics this morning and thought that I should post a montage to make up for lost time.

Tempeh Meatless balls with Garlicky Spaghetti


I love love love these meatless balls from Dan at Happyface Vegan. Here is the recipe. I have made them once before and didn't particularly like the green rice that the original recipe called for so I tried putting them on some spaghetti tossed with olive oil and roasted garlic. That was a little better. I still need to work on what I should serve them over. I think I need to make a garlicky cream sauce next time. Stay tuned for that in the future.

Buddha Bowl with Soy Ginger Sauce


This is another take on Buddha bowls. I used thriftyliving.net/?p=191">Thrifty Living's sauce with the full 2 Tbsp of soy sauce and still added more. I really like salt. :) I think I also added some crushed red pepper to the sauce to spice it up a little. We also used pan fried tempeh this time instead of tofu. I think I like the tofu in it better.

Peanutty Noodles with Kale and Butternut Squash


This is a recent recipe from Bryanna Clark Grogan. You can't quite tell from the picture, but there is a spaghetti (I used capallini) tossed with a yummy yummy peanut sauce and topped with roasted butternut and kale. The recipe called for broiling the butternut and kale, but that felt risky to me. So, I roasted the butternut at 400 for about 40-45 minutes. In the last 15 minutes, I added the kale on top of the butternut and roasted that too.

Corn Dog Bites


Corn dog bites (recipe) and the Chick Cheeze below were part of Superbowl Junk Food day. We didn't actually care about the superbowl, but liked the excuse to make junk food. I used Tofu Pups for the dogs and I cut the cayenne back to about 1/4 tsp. We also made Vegan Dad's seitan hot wings, but those didn't turn out for us.

Chick Cheeze


The recipe for Chick Cheeze is in the Uncheese Cookbook. We liked this ok, but prefer the Crock Cheeze from the same book.

Autumn Harvest Stew


Lastly, we made Autumn Harvest Stew from Nava Atlas's new cookbook 'Vegan Soups and Hearty Stews for All Seasons'. This is kind of a 3 sisters stew - pinto beans, corn, and squash. This was pretty good, but next time I would add 1 cup less of corn, and 1 can more of pinto beans.

Best Dinner in a long long long time

mmmm mmm mmmm mmm mmm mmm. This might be the best thing I have made in a while. Indonesian Yellow Rice with Indonesian Tempeh and Broccoli.



Here is the recipe for Indonesian Yellow Rice from Things Asian. I cut the original recipe in half and left out the butter. I threw all of the ingredients into my rice cooker and just let it do its thing. We actually thought we could cut the rice in half again. It still made a full pot.

Indonesian Yellow Rice
serves 5
1 1/2 cups rice, rinsed
1 1/2 cups coconut milk
1 cups water
1/2 tablespoon finely chopped fresh lemon grass
2 bay leaves
1/2 teaspoon turmeric
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon pepper
1/8 teaspoon, ground cloves
1/8 teaspoon cinnamon
Place all ingredients into rice cooker and cook according to rice cooker instructions. (See the original recipe for non-rice cooker instructions).

Indonesian Tempeh from About.com with some modifications
serves 3
1 Tbsp unrefined peanut oil
1 block of tempeh, 1/2 in cubes

1 Tbsp unrefined peanut oil
1/2 onion, thinly sliced
1 tomato, chopped (I used 2 ripe roma tomatoes)
1/4 cup soy sauce
3 tbsp brown sugar
water as needed

Steam tempeh for 20 minutes. Remove from steamer (now you can reuse the steamer to make some broccoli). Heat 1 tbsp unrefined peanut oil in a non-stick skillet. Fry tempeh till brown on all sides (turning occasionally) and then move to a paper towel.

Heat 1 tablespoons oil in a wok. Add onion and fry until the onion turns translucent. Add tomato and fry for 2-3 minutes more. Then, add the soy sauce, sugar and tempeh and mix until well coated. Add a bit of water if the sauce is too thick.

BBQ Tempeh Burgers with Grilled Pineapple and Mango Ketchup (and tots)

Sorry, sorry, sorry. I know I've been away for a while. I took a new job and switching jobs is a bit stressful. In addition to the job switch, the Boston Vegan Association is really starting to kick into high gear this month. phew. Anyway, I hope to get back into the swing of things. I got a new camera so I hope the food pics will be even better. This should be the last pic off of my old camera. We made this a couple of weeks ago. It was pretty tasty. I know tater tots aren't the healthiest thing in the world, but sometimes I have a craving. These were at least organic tater tots.



This is BBQ Tempeh Burgers with Grilled Pineapple and Mango Ketchup from the Candle Cafe cookbook. The bbq sauce was amazing. Sorry, I don't have a recipe link for you.

Now you probably want to know what to put in the hamburger buns!

Inside our homemade buns, we had grilled Tempeh Walnut burgers (recipe link). I did not add any olives (because I hate them so). I also did not add the optional umeboshi paste. I cut the fresh rosemary to 1/2 Tbsp. These burgers are ok and they hold together well on the grill. They are not my favorites though. We both thought they tasted a bit like crabcakes (well as much a we remember from the pre-veg days). I think it was the red bell pepper and celery. A great addition to these would be some vegan garlic aioli. I couldn't find any locally and was too lazy to make my own after making buns, veggie burgers, and oven baked potato fries. We also had a nice green spinach salad, in case you were worried about the color of the plate!