I know, I know, we're vegans. We need to avoid salad, to convince all those doubters that there is more to veganism than just salad! Think of all those delicious vegan, non-salad meals you've eaten! Think of all those terrible vegan salads you've been forced to endure!
This was not one of those salads. It was, in fact, totally worth being vegan for. (ignore that dangling preposition)
We took our inspiration from Asula, the AMAZING chef on roster at FOE on Saturdays. He cooks the greatest tempe ever. Apparently it is handmade locally by someone, and then Asula works some sort of magic on it so it's really delicious.
In a lunchbox, I combined equal parts tamari and light soy sauce (approx four tablespoons of each) with about half a teaspoon each of ground cumin and ground coriander, and one clove of minced garlic. I cubed my tempe erratically but vaguely in similar sizes, and coated it all in the mixture. Feel free to shake some more soy sauce over the top if it doesn't look moist enough. I put this in the fridge to marinate for about half an hour. Just a note - if I were doing this for gf buddies, I would drop the light soy and double the tamari.
At this point I ventured out of the house to buy some spirits, and Jo and Danni chopped up a handful of walnuts, one beautiful avocado (it is important that the avocado is beautiful), one punnet of cherry tomatoes, a pear and a carrot, which they julienned. They combined this with freshly picked spinach from our garden, and a little bit of lemon juice.
Upon my glorious and successful return, I fried the tempe in some peanut oil (you can use vege oil if you need to avoid peanuts). Don't be timid with the oil, you don't want to be deep frying but you want the tempe to crisp right on up. Fry, turning as needed, for about eight to ten minutes, until crispy and tasty-looking. Then throw it in the salad, as I did, and serve up with something delicious on the side. In our case, it was some left over lentils from FOE. In your case, maybe the world's greatest vausage rolls or something similar.
2 comments:
Hmm, well one could always serve it up and call it a "snack plate of deliciousness" rather than "salad", as it definitely has enough interesting and scrumptious components to keep the eating interesting!
I've had trouble finding a tempeh I like in Australia, though I'm quite partial to the "Fakin' Bacon" here in the US. It doesn't really taste like bacon, but that's a good thing in my book. And I've gone off topic again. Whoops!
I tend to heavily marinate my tempeh, so I don't really mind which tempeh I buy. I regularly buy one in a red and green packet from my local Indo grocery.
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