I’m sorry this title is terrible but I just couldn’t help myself.

Last week I got back to being adventurous in the kitchen by cooking tempah for the first time. You might be asking yourself, “What is tempeh?” Well, let me inform you!

Tempeh is a soy based product originally from Indonesia. It is much firmer than tofu which I like because the consistency of tofu has always kept me from truly loving it. I’ve had tempeh numerous times at Real Food Daily and I see it frequently in Trader Joe’s so I decided it was time to give it a try.

For my first recipe I adapted something I found in a new to me cookbook:

I received the other Heidi Swanson cookbook for Christmas last year from a friend and I love it so when I received an amazon gift card in August I immediately knew I wanted to get her other cookbook.

And no, I do not have pomegranate glaze on hand in my apartment. Luckily Heidi provides with substitutions. I also subbed in purple potatoes for butternut squash. I also halved the recipe.

Ingredients:

1/2 package of tempeh

3 small eggplants (or 1/2 a long Asian eggplant)

3 purple potatoes, diced

1/2 a lemon worth of zest

1 clove of garlic

Sprinkling of red pepper flakes

1/8 cup maple syrup

1/8 cup extra virgin olive oil

Instructions

To start, I diced the potatoes, eggplant, and tempeh making sure that they were around the same size.

As you can tell, I had a purple dinner. Maybe because College Football Season is starting? Yes. Showing my Northwestern pride.

Chop it up and stack it onto a baking sheet with a rim. Add lemon zest on top.

Then I combined the maple syrup, olive oil, and red pepper flakes together. Then mash the garlic into a paste with your knife and add that to the sauce.

Whisk it together and put it on top of the potato, tempeh and eggplant.

Spread into a single layer.

Bake at 350 for 45 to 60 mins. At the 25 min mark, take the pan out of the oven and move the food around. Stick it back into the oven and monitor it to make sure it doesn’t burn.

Yum! Throw in a bowl and top with feta!

Holy carp this was good! The tempeh was delicious and sweet and SO filling. This is the perfect dinner for marathon training because tempeh is protein packed. I’ve been in a constant state of hunger the past month with marathon training and tempeh is great for me because I am too lazy to eat meat. I can’t wait til winter squash is in season so I can make this with butternut!

I hope you all had a great week. It’s been hot in LA (90 degrees today) so I tabled my long run until tomorrow. I’m feeling super run down tonight. I’m very hungry, I have a tension headache and I’m too tired to focus on my work. I think I’m going to head to bed early!

Have you tried tempeh before?