Kohlrabi sautee with mustard and Spicy sweet potato fries

Just a tiny inspirational post…

Coarsely grated giant kohlrabi sauteed together with sliced onion on some pumpkinseed oil, with a pinch of salt and mustard mixed in at the end

Sweet potato cut into fries, drizzled with oil, salt and cumin, baked in the oven until crispy, turning at times

Rice pressure cooked with amaranth and sprinkled with gomasio

Store-bought seasoned tempeh baked together with the fries

🙂

Marinated tempeh and mustard “sandwiches”

Tempeh is great for two things: marinating it and frying it. I like to connect both. But you can do it in several ways and you can decide whether you first want to make your tempeh crispy and then marinade it, or first marinade it, and then fry it up… Well, this time I first lightly pan-fried  my tempeh slices in some oil until golden and then I let them sit for several hours in a bowl with a solution of water, tamari soy sauce and apple cider vinegar (the ratios were 2:1:1 – I used 50:25:25 ml to be exact). After a good soak, I took the slices out, made little “sandwiches” by connecting the tempeh slices using a thin layer or organic mustard, and then just heated them up for a few minutes under a lid on a pan on a low flame.

I made a sauerkraut sidedish by first sauteeing onion on oil with a pinch of salt and caraway seeds, then adding the sauerkraut and some water to nearly cover and letting it cook under a lid for maybe fifteen minutes. At the end I mixed through about a teaspoon of organic corn starch diluted in a splash of cold water and let it come to boil and thicken.

The two dishes were served with a rice/amaranth mixture with gomasio and some steamed carrot diagonals.

Rye sourdough bread pudding

As a kid I used to love my grandma´s bread pudding, of course made with white bread, eggs and milk, and most often also some sausage. But it´s actually unexpectedly nice even with rye sourdough bread! 😀 You can use the stale bread that´s growing old on your kitchen shelf, this recipe puts it to great use.

Cut one loaf into fairly small cubes and soak in rice (or other non-dairy) milk, I used rice cream diluted with water, also that was fine.  The bread shouldn´t be swimming in liquid, but it should be fairly saturated and spongey. Mix in 2 TBSP of shoyu soy sauce and season with black pepper, thyme and rosemary. For good binding of the mixture (and instead of the usual egg) I also mixed through a 1/4 cup of “flax seed water” – if you add a small amount of water to the seeds, in about half an hour you will get a gel-like consistency, in some recipes they call this “flax egg” 🙂 Allow the bread to soak at least for an hour.

Meanwhile you can sautee some minced onion on oil with a pinch of salt and then add sliced leek and mushrooms and cubes of tempeh ( I used ready-made flavoured tempeh, adding just plain tempeh would not be nice, so make sure to first marinade or otherwise season yours). Sautee together until the veggies and mushrooms are soft and tempeh well cooked through. Let cool and stir well into the pudding mixture. Add a generous amount of coarsely grated carrot. Transfer mixture into a greased casserole dish, smoothe out the surface and bake on about 180°C until there is a light golden crispy crust.  Serve with a fresh salad.

Tempeh in a maple glaze and Sweet potato french fries

Tempeh is such a great material for further use – on its own it doesn´t have a pleasant flavour at all, and it frankly even cannot be eaten as is, just steamed or baked, but it is great material for further additions of flavour. Try this one…

First cut plain tempeh into cubes and deep-fry them in quality oil until they are light golden and slightly crispy. Drain the pieces on a paper towel. Then place in a saucepan with 2 TBSP of shoyu soy sauce, 2 TBSP of apple cider vinegar, 1 TBSP of maple syrup (you could use brown rice syrup or barley malt instead, but the maple syrup gives an extra lovely taste), a small pinch of chilli powder and enough water to barely cover. Simmer on a low flame with a lid until the water evaporates and the coating gets a bit sticky, don´t let it burn though!

As a little side I also deep-fried sweet potato cut up into “french fries”. It replicated the real thing pretty closely, especially when I added a gentle sprinkling of sea salt. Normally I never serve two deep-fried food items at one meal, but this is still a post from our Christmas holiday cooking! 😀

I also had some steamed cabbage to balance the richness a bit, and brown rice with nori flakes.

Pasta and rice casserole with cheesy tempeh topping

What an odd dish, I can hear you saying! 😀 Well, it´s one of those wild ideas coming from my very own head and I admit it´s not a meal you would read about anywhere in any cookbook…But it turned out rather well, so I am publishing it here for your kind consideration 😀

I cooked separately about two servings of buckwheat pasta (made by a fabulous Czech buckwheat company) and about two servings of long grain brown rice. After cooling down I mixed them together in a large bowl and added some vegetables – raw chopped celery stalk and leek and raw grated carrot and celery root. I seasoned the funny mixture with some shoyu sauce, smoked paprika powder and dried oregano. I poured it into a casserole dish and topped with a topping which I made by combining grated tempeh (you could use fried tempeh or smoked tempeh, any tempeh that is already flavoured and not plain) with corn starch mixed in some cold water and some nutritional yeast powder (adds extra “cheesiness”). I popped the dish into the oven and baked until crusty and browned.

Pasta salad with vegetables and tempeh

This meal brought me back to my childhood when I used to love pasta salad with rich creamy mayonnaise. It´s really quick to put together when you use some convenient ingredients such as tofu mayo and already fried and seasoned packaged tempeh. But you can definitely make your own tofu mayo (there are plenty of recipes on the webs) or season and fry plain tempeh according to your wishes.

I cooked some corn pasta al dente. On a pan I sauteed onion on olive oil for a couple of minutes. Then I chopped up leek, celery (stalk plus leaves) and tempeh and I grated carrot and celery root on the coarse side of the grate. Afterwards I added all these veggies to the onions, sauteeing until soft and shiny. You can season them with fresh cracked black pepper. Mix the veggies and the pasta and add as much tofu mayonnaise as you like, mix well, voila!

“Szeged goulash” with tempeh and polenta dumplings

Szeged goulash is a typical Czech meal, although its name is derived from the Hungarian town of Szeged where I suppose they make something similar 😀 Of course the original goulash recipe calls for meat, but here we use tempeh instead, which pairs so beautifully with sauerkraut!!

This is another recipe inspired by Dagmar Lužná and her macro cookbook, but I did make quite some adjustments.

First sautee a large onion cut into thin half moons in about two tablespoons of oil. Add a pinch of salt and a good amount of caraway seeds and sautee until onion is shiny. Then add about 200 g of sauerkraut and an equal amount of finely shredded white cabbage. Sprinkle with paprika powder to your liking, I like quite a lot of it so that the sauce gets slightly red/brown. Cook for about 20 minutes on a low flame under a lid, the cabbage has to get very soft. Add in cubed fried tempeh (I buy ready fried tempeh from the shop, made by our lovely Czech macro company). Season with 2 tbsp of shoyu soy sauce and 2 tbsp of rice vinegar. At the end mix in approximately 2 teaspoons of corn starch (or kuzu) diluted in a bit of cold water, and let boil for a few  more minutes, so that the sauce thickens a bit.

I served the goulash with store-bought polenta dumplings brushed with oil and baked in the oven until crispy. But you can easily make your own “dumplings” by pouring hot cooked polenta into a shallow dish and letting it firm up in the fridge, just the shape will be different 😀

Soba noodles with curried pumpkin sauce and tempeh crumble

Aaaaah, my favourite soba noodles! I have them so seldom, because they are so expensive! 😀 While I believe that nothing compares to authentic Japanese soba ( buckwheat and wheat or pure 100% buckwheat noodles), here in the Czech Republic I choose to substitute them with the cheaper local buckwheat pasta. I´m actually happy we have such a great buckwheat-product brand, not every country is so lucky! But here I used my long-saved stack of real soba, bought during our stay in Slovenia..

I made a sauce of long cooked cubed hokkaido pumpkin and onions – nearly cover the cubes with water and boil on low flame until soft. I seasoned the sauce with black Indian vulcanic salt and a generous amount of curry powder. I blended the sauce in a blender for a perfectly creamy texture.

On a pan I sauteed on oil a bunch of green beans, cut into tiny pieces, along with crumbled up tempeh and a splash of shoyu soy sauce.

Layer the bean/tempeh mixture and the pumpkin curry sauce over the noodles 🙂

Roasted red beet, zucchini and tempeh with quick “sauerkraut”

I don´t often make meals with red beet as beets contain some oxalic acid, nevertheless I do like a roasted beet from time to time. I find they take very long to become soft when just baked in the oven…so it´s best to first steam your beet chunks for some time until they´re semi-soft. Then toss the chunks with similar-size chunks of zucchini (I had yellow one) and tempeh (I used marinated, so better cook yours with some soy sauce first to give it flavour) in a bowl. Stir in olive oil to coat and then some salt, dried basil, oregano and thyme. Transfer into a baking dish and bake for about 45 minutes on 200°C, stirring at times and checking that the veggies don´t burn.

Meanwhile finely shred cabbage (I used both white and red cabbage) and cook in a pot with a lid and a small amount of water, on a low to medium flame. Don´t forget a pinch of salt. You might need to use a flame tamer and stir at times so the cabbage cooks evenly. Halfway add a splash of vinegar (I had apple cider vinegar) and caraway seeds if you like them – in the traditional Czech sauerkraut they are mandatory 😀 Cook long until almost completely soft, and near the end add a splash of mirin. After this step your “sauerkraut” will become done quickly.

I served these dishes with millet and gomasio.

Grain&Tempeh Casserole and a Salad

One of my last ovendishes…before the heat struck! 😀 Now I truly don´t bake ANYTHING!!

This one was made by combining cooked leftover rice and hato mugi mixture with some sauteed veggies and pan-fried tempeh. For the veggies water or oil-sautee  some cut up leek, green beans, celery stalk and kohlrabi (I used stems), just very shortly, so they are not raw, and season with tamari, thyme and black pepper. Mix with raw grated carrot. Pan-fry tempeh in a moderate amount of oil until golden and spray lightly with some tamari. Mix all ingredients through, move into a baking form and bake on about 200 °C until crispy.

Casseroles go well with salads, which bring more light uplifting energy – mine is made from lollo rosso lettuce, chinese cabbage and cucumber, with added olives, roasted pumpkin seeds and a vinaigrette of 2 tsp apple cider vinegar, 2 tsp flaxseed oil, a pinch of salt and half a clove of finely minced garlic.