When you search the internet for vegan recipes you’ll see a lot of tofu, tempeh and seitan passing by. I must admit that I personally never felt the need to “replace” meat or fish, so I do not use tofu and so on in my recipes. However, since I started write about my dishes and thus set myself the task of being as versatile as possible, I think there is no way around those products. So this is my first attempt ever at preparing a dish with tempeh.

I was actually that unfamiliar with it that I did not even knew what it looked like, but managed to find it easily in the store.

So for those of you who are also new at this, this is what it looks like when you buy it. When you open up the package and slice it will look like this:

Cut it in any form you like. Tempeh is very firm which was quite a surprise to me. I decided to start simple and stir fry it in a mixture of coconut sugar soy sauce, rice vinegar, chili flakes, sesame oil, black garlic and fresh grated ginger. Teriyaki style basically.

I roasted some tomatoes and baby onions in the oven with some olive oil, salt and pepper and served everything with spiced red rice.

Did I like it? Well I did not dislike it, it is firm and I would describe the taste as somewhat nutty. I think I would qualify it as agreeable, but probably not for me. I just do not feel the need to replace a piece of meat, because I do not miss it all. I like my food the way it is….