tempeh from Eat, Drink and Be Vegan
This tempeh . . . ZOMG. My boyfriend and I were totally freaking out over how good it was. It's so yummy and all crispy and delicious on the outside. This is possibly the best tempeh I've ever eaten, and it's ridiculously easy to make. This is definitely going into heavy rotation in my kitchen.
The carrots . . . meh. I found the recipe somewhere on the internet, but it wasn't good enough for me to bother finding the link. The carrots were braised in apple cider with lots of earth balance and maybe some ginger . . . Overall, too sweet and too boring.
The squash came from my CSA. I'm not sure exactly what kind of squash it is - it's shaped like acorn squash, but mottled green and white and orange. I just cut it in half, and baked it. Then I put some earth balance and salt on it once I took it out of the oven. I actually didn't like the squash very much, it was sort of bland and slightly sour. I talked to my boyfriend about it, and he was like "Yeah, but that sauce you put on it was great!" I was like "Uh, you mean earth balance?"
But the most exciting part of this meal was that the tempeh was homemade. I haven't gotten around to making my incubator yet, so I just made this in my oven, ghetto-tempeh-style. I used 2 1/2 cups dried soybeans, a teaspoon of tempeh starter, and a tablespoon of apple cider vinegar.
I first pulsed the dried beans in my food processor to break them up to make the hulls come off easier. I soaked them overnight. Most of the hulls came off while they soaking, but I went through and removed the ones that were still on the soybeans by rubbing them between my hands. (That part was boring, and I should have just pulsed for longer in the food processor.)
Then I boiled the soybeans for 40 minutes. Afterwards, I drained them and let them dry on some terry cloth kitchen towels for about 20 minutes. I rubbed them with the towels a little bit to finish drying them. There's this part in
Wild Fermentation where Sandor Katz talks about towel drying soybeans, and he says that most people never get to experience soybeans so intimately, and you should savor it. So every time I dry my soybeans off I think about savoring the intimacy.
Then I mixed the soybeans in with some tempeh culture (I get mine from
GEM Cultures.) and the apple cider vinegar (it helps keep the soybeans from rotting before the starter kicks in), and spread the mixture in a baking pan, about half an inch thick. I pressed the soybeans down into the pan with the back of a spoon to make it easier for the culture to spread, and covered the pan with tin foil - I poked holes in the tin foil with a skewer, making a grid pattern with holes 1/2 to 1 inch apart. (The culture needs air to work.)
Then I stuck the pan in my oven for 24 hours. I didn't turn the oven on, but I turned the oven light on and stuffed a towel in the door to keep it slightly ajar so the tempeh could get air. I planned this for a day I knew we were going out to dinner, because I think that using the store would probably mess up the temperatures. The tempeh needs to be kept at around 85 degrees for the culture to work, and the oven light makes it just the right temperature. I totally did not expect this to work, but it totally did! And I had fresh, delicious tempeh. (If your tempeh was successful, it will have a fresh, mushroomy smell to it.) Whenever I take fresh tempeh out, I'm amazed by how warm and alive it feels. I would totally encourage people to make it, it's actually very easy (the most difficult part is hulling the soybeans). I found
this guide very helpful.
Local: Carrots, squash