Sammiches: BBQ Tempeh with Chipotle Slaw

Alright, guys. It's time to haul out your inner vegetarian. Cuz I've got a sammich here that's gonna make you want to throw your Carnivorous ways aside. At least for an hour or two.

We like to start off with a couple of packages of Bountiful Bean soy tempeh. This stuff rocks. Tempeh is a nutritional super hero -- high in protein, dietary fiber, iron, potassium, calcium, and phytochemicals like isoflavones. The best part is, it's a fermented soy product, which means that your body assimilates the nutrients from tempeh far more easily than it does beans and tofu. Because the enzymes in the protein are partially broken down by the fermentation process, it also doesn't produce any sort of gastrointestinal distress (or gas). The fact that the Bountiful Bean brand is made locally is an added bonus.
We like to take the tempeh and cut it into strips. Then, we nestle it into an 8"x8" glass pan that's filled with a cup or so of homemade barbeque sauce.
Then we take another cup of the sauce and spred it over the top. The tempeh tastes best if it's allowed to marinate in the sauce overnight -- so we try to plan ahead. After the tempeh has marinated in the sauce, we toss it into a 350ºF oven for about 30 minutes until the tempeh has browned a bit and most of the sauce has been absorbed.
While the tempeh is cooking, we make up a batch of our favorite slaw. We like to make ours with broccoli slaw and a hint of chipotle. The smokey flavor is just perfect with the BBQ tempeh, and we can feel good about getting a nice serving of broccoli and carrots with our sammich.
When the tempeh is nicely roasted, we slice open a couple of whole-grain hamburger buns, add a few slices of tempeh and a nice spoonful of the slaw. And we've got ourselves a pretty impressive sammich. Add a side of sweet potato fries, and this is a Friday night dinner that's TOTALLY worth getting excited about.
Don't forget the recipes:

BBQ Tempeh
Chipotle Slaw

This post is our submission to the event, Fight Back Fridays, hosted by Food Renegade. The event promotes the sharing of collective wisdom regarding real, nourishing foods -- and the fight against conventional nutritional thinking. Check it out!


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Stir Fry with Tofu, Sweet Potatoes, Red Cabbage, and Hoisin

We're getting to that dreaded point of winter. The point where I'm seriously stretching my poor interior brain parts to think of ways to survive on what's left of the winter vegetables.

I've already resigned myself to the fact that most of the available salad greens are coming from California. And there's little hope of finding a bright young sweet pepper that hasn't traveled all the way from Mexico just to hang with the (decidedly pastier) local mushrooms at our little Wisconsin food co-op.

I must admit that we didn't exactly stow away quite enough of the summer harvest to get us through the winter, so I've been anxiously perusing the grocery aisles to see what I can find that's... well... seasonal. Not a ton out there -- but sometimes I'm pleasantly surprised. One of the storage vegetables that we can seem to find from local sources well into February is cabbage. Thank goodness for the lowly petite au choux! I was even more thrilled when I picked up the latest issue of Bon Appetit magazine and found a recipe for a delightful stir fry inside. Not only did it use red cabbage, but it made use of another winter staple -- the sweet potato.
I wasn't convinced that I was in the mood for chicken, which was supposed to be part of the stir-fry, so I turned to a package of tofu from our local soy purveyor, the Simple Soyman. They make THE BEST nigari-style tofu I've ever had, and it's simply perfect when crisped up a bit and thrown into a stir fry. So, we went with that instead.

As I was glancing through our spice cupboard, I found a small jar of Szechuan peppercorns. They looked so lovely and peppery, I poured a few out and gave them a photo op.
Most recognized for the part it plays in Chinese five spice and Japanese seven spice powders, the Szechuan peppercorn is definitely worth seeking out. Really a seed from the prickley ash tree, this "peppercorn" offers both a unique flavor and aroma to any dish in which it is used. Not quite as pungent as black pepper, Szechuan pepper has a floral aroma and slight lemony overtones. Perfect for this dish, if I do say so myself.

We added a bit to the stir-fry to kick it up a notch, and I really liked the flavors it brought forward when paired with the sweetness of the potato. We threw everything on top of some soba noodles and called it dinner.

The whole affair turned out to be quite the lovely dish. The vegetables cooked quickly, which is a bonus on a weeknight. And the flavors warmed our winter bellies quite nicely while giving us a boatload of nutrients to boot.

I'd call that a bonus at this time of the year.

Original Recipe: Chicken Stiry Fry with Yams, Red Cabbage, and Hoisin (Bon Appetit, February 2009)


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