I am not a very good cook. I am learning. I decided I would post about what I cook, whether it turned out OK or not. I’m not saying this stir-fry didn’t turn out alright, but I’ve made some pretty gross “stir-fry”-esque dishes before. I’ve also never successfully made anything with tempeh before. Surprisingly, this dish ended up being pretty tasty.
I took it out of the wrapper before I used it.
According to the Wikipedia page on tempeh, it is a soybean cake that originated in Indonesia. The other meat substitute, tofu, is squishy and hard to work with and also kind of gross (according to…me).
I mean, it looks authentic?
So this is my spicy Szechwan stir-fry sauce that I got in the “ethnic” aisle (the one with the Asian food, pasta, tortillas and matzo ball soup) at Kroger. I know that I could probably make a stir-fry sauce…but I’m sure I would screw it up, and I wanted stir-fry to be something I could just throw together.
Szechwan bath.
So I cut the tempeh into little cubes. I’m not sure how big they were and I don’t know if it totally matters. I didn’t want them to be oddly larger or smaller than anything else I’d throw in the stir-fry, so I planned accordingly. Then I threw them in a baggie, dumped some sauce on top, made sure all the pieces were coated and let them marinate in the fridge for an hour.
After the tempeh was done marinating, I fried it in canola oil for a few minutes. I then set it on a plate lined with paper towels so the excess oil could drain.
Bell pepper, mushroom, carrots, zucchini
I then put some bell pepper, carrots, zucchini, and mushroom (all just vegetables I had sitting in the fridge…as you can tell, I always have bell pepper sitting around) in a pan lightly coated with olive oil. I added my Szechwan sauce and tempeh, and cooked until the veggies were tender.
Ready to eat!
Then I put it over some rice.
Yum.
And I ate it.
I made tempeh today, for the second time! Good stuff!
I’ve never made tofu before, although I have some in the fridge that I will try to do something with later this week. It does seem rather messy.
Looks good!
I’ve heard that a good way to make tofu easier to work with is to freeze it overnight before you use it. Apparently it makes the texture less…mushy. I’ve never tried it, but I plan to at some point soon.
that looks delicious! lets cook soon, please.
I have a bunch of recipes in my cookbook that I’d like to try. I have them bookmarked. We’ll totally cook soon!