Tempeh Mafe

I made this last week (or maybe the week before?? I'm getting bad at updating).  Mafe is an African peanut stew typically made with meat, naturally, but in this version the protein is baked tempeh, which really goes well with the peanut flavor.

The recipe is from Vegan Soul Kitchen and I felt like it was a touch fussier than it needed to be - the tempeh  had to be baked in marinade first, but as it was then just dumped into the stew, I think I will probably just steam it a little bit first the next time I make this dish.

What really makes it are the roasted seasoned peanuts ("Spicy Goobers", also from Vegan Soul Kitchen).  We still have a bunch of those in the fridge and they are great for a little snack.

Apple Tempeh Triangle Dippers

My mom got me Vegan Sandwiches Save the Day for my birthday!  Yay!  I have had it on the Amazon Wish List for ages (and even moved it into my cart a couple of times) but could never pull the trigger.  There are some pretty awesome sandwich recipes in the book that I think will keep me occupied for a long time.

The first thing I tried, though, is not really a sandwich - Apple Tempeh Triangles with a pomegranate dipping sauce.  These look very fancy but using storebought puff pastry makes them super simple to put together.  The filling is just crumbled smoky tempeh, apples, pomegranate seeds, and cinnamon, and the sauce took 5 minutes to put together on the stovetop.

They were good at room temperature for lunch the next day, too!

Tempeh Tantrum, Homemade-Style

The Remedy Diner downtown is one of the only restaurants in Raleigh with real vegetarian food (meaning that they know how to cook with tofu and tempeh and don't just serve you a portobello mushroom or a veggie burger from a box).  We are there pretty often, and virtually every single time I order their Tempeh Tantrum sandwich, which was voted one of the Top 5 Vegan Sandwiches in the country by PETA.  It's marinated tempeh, veggie bacon, avocado, lettuce, tomato, and pesto Veganaise, and it really is great.

The thing is, though, that the Remedy keeps raising their prices and the last few times I've been there, they put one tiny slice of tempeh on there and the avocado keeps getting thinner and thinner as well.  They also got rid of their mustardy potato salad and now the only side options are plain chips and coleslaw.  Unacceptable.  I decided to take matters into my own hands and just make this thing at home.

It's kind of hard to see over that giant pile of tots, but it worked out really well and was super great and did not cost us $25 for the two sandwiches.  Success!

Tempeh Coconut Curry

I made a delicious coconut curry from Bean to Bean tonight, with baked marinated tempeh, sweet potatoes, zucchini, and spinach.

The tempeh marinade was just soy sauce, apple cider vinegar, and a little vegan worcestershire, but it was really really great.  I'm going to use it to bake some tempeh for sandwiches this weekend.

BBQ Tempeh Sandwich

I made a delicious sandwich!

It is from Vegan Soul Kitchen, and is supposed to be open-faced but I never know what to do with an open faced sandwich so I made it a regular one.  The tempeh was baked in a BBQ sauce concoction for an hour and then seared just a little bit to give it a crust.  It was GOOD.  I made citrus collards on the side (also from Vegan Soul Kitchen, and also great).  I'm a pretty big fan of that cookbook so far.

Coconut Sweet Potato Puree

I have been a terrible cook lately.  I was out of town last weekend and whenever that happens it seems like the week before and the week after are both filled with lots of takeout and quick standbys.  But!  I am back in top form starting tonight.  Even though this is an ugly picture.

I made my standard smoky tempeh and collards, but the side is new - it's a Coconut Sweet Potato Puree from Vegan Soul Kitchen and it is amazing.  When we were finished eating Ben said, "Can you make that again tomorrow?"  You peel and cube sweet potatoes, toss them in a picture of agave, coconut oil, and a little bit (1/8th tsp per pound) of salt, then roast for 40 minutes.  When they're done, puree in a food processor with enough coconut milk to make creamy and voila! You have deliciousness.

We also got a cat fountain today. Correction:  BEN got the cat fountain.  It was an impulse buy.  He's such a sucker.  Anyway, they are so confused and interested in it and, naturally, we have been staring at them staring at the fountain all day.  Cutest and funniest cats in the land.

You might notice the TV tray sitting in front of the window behind Papaya.  That's so they can have a place to sit and see outside, naturally.  We are classy decorators.  There's one in the kitchen, too.

Creole Tempeh and Grits

Oh, look, I got another cookbook: Vegan Soul Kitchen by Bryant Terry.  Although I'm a little annoyed by the style and presentation of the book, the recipes look pretty great across the board, and that's the important part.  One thing I really like about the book is that he gives you good ideas for where to start - at the very beginning, he groups his favorite six recipes into one introductory section.  This recipe, Creole Tempeh and Grits, is in that section, and is a vegan takeoff on the southern standard shrimp & grits.  I made some smoky collards to go on the side.

Yeah, it was amazing.  Tempeh is a genius substitution for shrimp, because the texture is actually pretty similar, and the flavors were just fantastic.  I'm impressed and excited to try more from this book.

Tempeh Salad Sandwich

Here is a sandwich I made the other day.  I always really loved tuna salad and egg salad sandwiches, but have been pleasantly surprised at how easy it is to mimic those flavors and textures with non-meat products. Tofu is a perfect replacement for egg salad, especially if you add black salt, which has a distinct eggy flavor.

These are tempeh mixed with veganaise and diced sauteed onion, garlic, and red pepper, with some spices like cumin, coriander, etc.  It is loosely based on the Ultimate Tempeh Salad Sandwiches recipe from American Vegan Kitchen, but she calls for some extra stuff (jalapenos, chopped dill pickle) I didn't feel like dealing with.

I added tomato and avocado and it was a delicious and hearty sandwich.  Sandwiches are #1!

Esme's Sauce

If you google "esme's sauce" you get tons of hits - this concoction was invented by someone on the Post Punk Kitchen message boards at some point before my time there, and has become kind of famous in vegan circles.  Here's the recipe.  I think it's so popular because it's really easy and is composed of equal parts of ingredients that pretty much everyone (every vegan, anyway) has in the house at any given time.

I replaced the oil with water, since I figured the tahini was already providing a good amount of fat, and used the mustard option plus one tablespoon of nutritional yeast for good measure.  We had it on rotini with half a package of crumbled tempeh and a lot of kale.

It took about 25 minutes start to finish, even including steaming the kale and crumbling and steaming the tempeh, so definitely good for a weeknight dinner.  It has a weird unexpectedly tangy flavor but we really liked it. Ben claimed he could taste the nutritional yeast and that I should leave it out next time, so I GUESS I will do that because I'm so nice.

Spinach-Avocado Salad with Tempeh Asado

As I was driving home from work yesterday, I was thinking about this dinner, which was on the schedule, and thinking, "maybe I should just make something else."  It didn't seem like it would be filling enough and was maybe also a bit boring.  I should really know better than not to trust Viva Vegan!

This salad has few ingredients - just spinach, red onion, avocado, and tomato.  The tempeh asado is briefly marinated in a latin-ish sauce for about ten minutes and then fried.  But the dressing was the star, and it was super simple, too - just Veganaise, dried chiles that have been toasted and soaked in water for a bit, lime juice, and ketchup. 

Overall it was just fantastic, and easily kept me full until bedtime.  Now that our summer is here, I'm sure I will be making more entree salads for dinner.  Yay!

Spaghetti with Tempeh Cutlets with Creamy Tomato Sauce

This recipe is from American Vegan Kitchen.  I marinated the tempeh overnight in red wine vinegar and spices and it was so good - it soaked up every bit of the marinade.  The tomato sauce was a little spicy, and made creamy by the addition of soy milk and a little flour for thickening.  I don't know why I've never thought to do that before.

I also used the first of our backyard summer basil to garnish!

Crunchy Kale and Coconut Bowl

A bunch of my friends have been talking about this recipe for weeks and I finally got around to trying it out tonight. I only used 1 Tbsp of olive oil as opposed to the 1/3 cup she calls for, and also halved the coconut, but even with those modifications it was pretty amazingly awesome. Neither one of us are huge coconut fans, really, but it works better in this than anything else I have run across, ever.

I served it over brown rice instead of farro, and made Veganomicon's Smoky Tempeh to round it out as a full meal.

Tempeh Stroganoff Stuffed Potatoes

Today I baked potatoes in the crock pot and it worked perfectly! I'm so excited! I pricked some holes in them and stuck them in there on low and cooked them for a little over six hours. I think they would have been fine for even longer, so it will work great for workdays too. Whoot!

OK so the filling is a stroganoff recipe from American Vegan Kitchen: baked tempeh cubes and mushrooms in a (homemade) tofu-chive sour cream sauce. Then you hollow out the potatoes and add the mashed filling to the tempeh mixture, mix it all together, and stuff the potatoes. It was delicious! I have tons of extra filling to eat plain for breakfast tomorrow.

It is full on spring here now, which means:

but also:

Pine pollen in Raleigh is the worst! It's been raining really frequently over the past couple of weeks but that looks to be ending after today, so this week is going to be pretty gross, I think. Check out the buildup on my car after only one day!

Yuck.

Tahini Dill Sauce and Cheesecake

So after we ate that pizza the other night, we decided to have more pizza the next day also. And then we both started to feel pretty gross and fat. So for our next dinner I went super simple and light, with some steamed kale, baked tofu, and Veganomicon's Tahini Dill Sauce.

That tahini dill sauce is SO GOOD. So for today's lunch I went to the store and got more kale and did some smoky tempeh to serve it with.

I also made a cheesecake. This recipe is from Vegan Planet, a Robin Robertson book I got from the library to try out - I've been feeling like I'm about ready for a new cookbook. It's supposed to be key lime, but somehow I forgot to get limes so I used lemons instead. I also made a blueberry-ginger sauce for topping.

It is delicious. The best vegan cheesecake so far. However, none of them have been quite dense enough. This one has a 1:3 ratio of silken tofu to vegan cream cheese and I'm thinking of starting to experiment and use more cream cheese than tofu. Experimenting seems scary, though! We'll see.

Red Wine Tempeh & Eggplant Kibbeh

The tempeh and kibbeh are both new-to-me recipes from Appetite for Reduction and both were great. The tempeh is supposed to have kalamata olives pureed with the red wine, garlic & herb marinade, but I cannot get over my hatred of olives. I've tried so many times and it's just not happening. I added some capers instead to help give that briny taste, and it seemed to work okay.

The kibbeh is a mixture of cooked eggplant, tomatoes, onion, and garlic, mixed with bulgur and baked in a casserole dish. We really liked it.



I made a simple salad of tomato, cucumber, parsley, lemon juice, and olive oil on the side. It was a nice mediterranean-ish dinner.

Spicy Tempeh, Creole-Stuffed Peppers & Messy Rice

All of these recipes are from Veganomicon. I chose this dinner using the tried and true "open a page and go with it method", and the page happen to open to the Creole-Stuffed Peppers. Now, historically Ben has been kind of whiny about not liking stuffed peppers, but I decided to disregard that and make them anyway.

They were GREAT. Every time I've made stuffed peppers before you just slice them open and stuff them up and bake for a while, but these were boiled for 5 minutes beforehand to soften them up and it made a huge difference. The filling is black-eyed peas, carrots, tomatoes, garlic & onion, etc. Totally delicious.

I was going to just bake the tempeh but I caved halfway through the cooking time and took it out of the oven to fry it. It's better that way! And the rice was great too, seasoned with garlic, tomato paste & coriander.

Tamarind BBQ Tempeh & Sweet Potatoes with Polenta Stuffing

This is another Appetite for Reduction meal. I've made the tempeh & sweet potatoes before but not the stuffing.

I'm glad I got around to the stuffing this time because it was delicious.

Tempeh Orzilla

It's a PPK kind of week over here - I made another recent recipe from the website last night, Tempeh Orzilla. (Her picture is prettier than mine.)

I had to replace the anise with fennel, but otherwise did just what she said and it was great.

Mac & Trees with Buffalo Tempeh

Oh, weird vegan food, how I missed you.

More Appetite for Reduction tonight - actually, for most of this week. This is a nutritional yeast based fake cheese sauce with pasta and broccoli, with a spicy tempeh on top. I used half the hot sauce called for in the recipe and it was plenty hot for me.

I worried that we might not be into the nutritional yeast sauce after eating cheese in Scotland, but apparently this stuff is actually really good, because we both loved it.

Miscellaneous

This dinner is called "use up all the perishables before we go out of town." I made my true love Smoky Tempeh from Veganomicon, sauteed some zucchini and spinach in a little Earth Balance with salt & pepper, and steamed some corn on the cob in the microwave.

Aside from the marinating of the tempeh, this took about ten minutes and successfully used up all the vegetables in the fridge. Except the cabbage that has been in there for three weeks and miraculously still looks like new. I'm going to do something with that eventually, I swear.