Improvised caesar dressing for a kale salad. (B: Based on Kenji’s Serious Eats
recipe, but really I thought this was better.)
- half a can of anchovies (the flat kind) with their oil
- 4 smashed garlic cloves
- eyeballed ~2-4 tablespoons of apple cider vinegar (enough to cover the entire
bottom of the food processor bowl)
- 1 egg yolk
blend (food processor)
drizzle grapeseed oil in until it looks like dressing
kale salad this evening was torn lacinato leaves, massaged with olive oil and
salt and left to rest.
julienned raw beets in bariani balsamic vinegar toasted bread crumbs
combine, cover with parmesan
For my birthday this past year, Buro gifted me an electric proofer. I don’t bake much (yet??) and this gift was intended to help me fulfill my long time dream of making fresh, homemade tempeh.
Fresh tempeh is pretty different than grocery store tempeh, at least around where we live. The texture is softer, it has a cleaner soy flavor, and it absorbs sauces incredibly well. In the Bay Area, Milennnium has a great housemade tempeh on their menu, and when travelling to Asheville we had really incredible BBQ local tempeh at Luella’s. For a while we were able to purchase the Alive & Well fresh tempeh (made in Sonoma), but I haven’t seen it around in a few years.
I pulled together a method for making tempeh from 3 different books, all of which say basically the same thing.
I’d like to experiment next year with making non-soy bean tempehs (chana daal???) as well as using banana leaves which are abundant around the neighborhood.
Ingredients and Tools
- soy beans
- quart sized zip lock bag
- toothpick
- electric proofer, or an ambient air temperature of 85-91 degrees fahrenheit for at least 12 hours
- vinegar (basic ass white vinegar is fine and preferred here)
- tempeh culture
Directions
- Purchase a tempeh starter culture. I got mine from Preserved in Oakland.
- Soak soy beans for at least 24 hours. 2 cups of dry soy beans makes roughly 2 sandwich bags of tempeh. According to Shurtleff and Katz, soaking longer is traditional to provide some acidification as protection from bad bacteria growth. There’s also been some studies on this recently.
- “Husk” soy beans from their shells. This is incredibly tedious and if I ever want to scale up, I want to machine this step. You can sort of rub the husks off while the soy beans are in water and then let the husks float. Then remove the husks gently with a sieve. The idea behind this step is to allow the tempeh culture to permeate the bean – the husks are too waxy for the culture to let the beans stick together. I didn’t do a great job every time I dehusked, and when that happens you end up with a tempeh that is a little more crumbly and less like a block (still delicious though).
- Steam husked soy beans for ~30-45 minutes.
- Completely dry soy beans by placing them in a single layer on sheet pans and drying with a paper towel. You can also blow dry with a blow dryer apparently.
- Add tempeh culture, in accordance with the directions on the tempeh culture packet and ~1 tablespoon of vinegar for every 2 cups of dry soy beans. This is to add additional acifidifcation to prevent bad bacteria growth.
- Poke holes every 1/2 inch into quart sized ziplock/sandwich bags with a toothpick.
- Pour tempeh into zip block bags, make sure they’re extremely flat. Place in proofer at 88 degrees fahreneheit. After 12 hours, check on tempeh. If it’s more solid feeling and you start to see white stuff develop, turn the proofer off and wait an additional 12 hours for it to fully ferment. Then transfer to fridge to slow fermentation. It is VERY ACTIVE! and will continue to mature in the fridge even. Store bought tempeh is pasteurized.
Some tempeh strategies
We have two high level strategies for making tempeh–
- “Fry” and then braise in sauce.
For the frying step, cut tempeh blocks into narrow strips / triangles / cubes, 1/2 inch - 1 inch thick at most (if you can get thinner –try that too!). Panfry or airfry with a small amount of oil. This helps the tempeh keep its composition while braising in sauce, but note that tempeh absorbs a lot of oil. It’s very fractal-y in there and all of that fungus likes absorbing oil a lot. I’ve been experimenting with air frying to try to decrease the amount of oil absorbed, but I’ve had mixed results. At this point, the tempeh is ready to be sauced and slowly braised on low until it tastes delicious.
- Marinade in sauce and then simmer. Tempeh can hang out in marinade in the fridge for a day or two, and it’s a great way to slow the maturing step if you have too much homemade tempeh on hand. The tempeh if it’s not very firm can potentially fall apart in the braising though.
- Blanching in boiling water before simmering in sauce. Blanch whole pieces of tempeh, not slices. This is to reduce any bitterness from over fermentation, and allows you to cook the tempeh a little before simmering in sauce.
What sauces, you ask?
- we’ve experimented with a “bbq” sauce that is hot sauce, soy sauce, honey, spices, water.
- https://mookerzhou.github.io/cooking_journal/sauces/2022/12/25/mustard-bbq-sauce.html
Other people’s tempeh recipes
- This is good for crumbly tempeh that didn’t form a good block: https://chejorge.com/2021/01/08/vegan-taiwanese-braised-tempeh/
- https://www.bonappetit.com/recipe/sambal-goreng-tempe
Cardoons are gorgeous perennials that grow really well in the Bay Area and are
delicious when prepared correctly. They taste a lot like artichoke hearts but
have a lot more edible product per plant and just way less fussy to eat. The
Weird Catch is that you can’t really buy them anywhere.
This recipe is a somewhat complicated French casserole dish we made using
cardoons grown at home. We pieced together this recipe and approach
from a few different sources online. The quantities here
aren’t precise and we basically used as much to fill a smaller, enameled
casserole dish.
- Prepare the cardoons:
- If growing at home, you’ll need to bundle the cardoon fronds together with
some burlap and leave in the garden for a few weeks before you eat
them. Confusingly, this is called ‘blanching’ and is intended to
sweeten the cardoons, which are generally very bitter. (Aside: it’s unclear
if this is necessary.)
- Harvest cardoons, strip leaves, wash thoroughly, and remove any stringy
fibers. Cut into 3 inch battons and store under some lemon water until
finished.
- Blanch in salty, boiling water until edible/al dente, and remove.
- Prepare the bone marrow:
- Return the blanching pot to a boil and add bone marrow (whole, bones and
all) to the pot for just a minute or two.
- Remove bone marrow and set on ends in casserole dish.
- Prepare a sauce:
- Melt 2 tbsp or so of shallot compound butter in a pan. Once melted, add 2
tbsp of flour and stir to lightly cook. Add salt as needed and ground black
pepper.
- Add about 1/2 quart of chicken stock and reduce to a sauce over 30 minutes.
- Layer cardoon battons in-between the marrow bones in the casserole dish,
following with sauce. Cover top layer with grated hard cheese.
- Bake at 350F until top layer is browned and bubbly.
Other variants:
- We also sauteed mushrooms in butter and added them as a final layer before the cheese.
This is a casual summer/early Fall casserole to use up tomatoes, eggplants, and
basil from the CSA or garden. Not really a lasagna, as it doesn’t use lasagna
noodles.
- Slice Italian-style eggplant thinly, salt, and spread out on a sheet pan to
expel some water.
- Dry off eggplant with a towel, bake on sheet pan in the oven at 350F until
cooked through.
- In a casserole dish, interleave eggplant with tomato sauce and grated
pecorino, parmesan, etc.
- Lightly oil panko breadcrumbs with olive oil in large bowl.
- Complete the last layer with tomato sauce, grated cheese, and oiled panko
breadcrumbs (in that order).
- Heat through in the oven at 350F.
- Sprinkle with fresh basil, either chopped or whole.
Oh no! It’s been almost two years and we haven’t written a new single recipe
here.
…Anyway! This is a sticky mustard-based BBQ sauce for pulled pork we made
early in 2022. The final product should fill a 8oz deli container.
Add the following to a non-reactive sauce pan, heat to a simmer and cook until
slightly reduced and syrupy.
- 1/3 cup apple cider, or shallot vinegar (if available)
- 1/3 cup yellow mustard
- 1/4 cup ketchup
- 2 tsp fish sauce
- 1 tsp garlic powder
- 1 tsp fine mustard powder
- 1/2 tsp mitmita, or some other finely ground chili powder blend
- 1 tbsp (?) brown sugar
- 1 tbsp (?) honey
- additional salt, if needed
This is not so much a recipe as so much as a series of directions, but then again, what is a recipe!! Writing this up for a friend who’s asked for a solution to the many Meyer Lemons she’s gifted from other people’s trees.
Ingredients:
- lemons
- salt, ideally Diamond Crystal Kosher Salt
Tools:
- wide mouth mason jar– 12-15 normal sized lemons fit preserved into one 32 oz jar
- pickling weight–I love glass wide mouth pickle weights like these. They’re easy to use. Alternatively, if you don’t pickle often you can fill a small plastic bag with 5% salt brine and use that.
Technique:
- Wash all lemons. Set two aside for adding extra juice.
- Cut lemons lengthwise in half but do not cut all the way through. Leave a little attached at the base.
- Then make another cut the other way as if you were cutting the lemon into quarters, but also not all the way through.
End result should look something like:
- Salt all exposed edges of the lemon generously, enough so that you can mostly see salt and not see the lemon flesh itself. For an average sized lemon, this usually takes ~1 tablespoon of diamond crystal kosher salt
- Gently open the lemon and squish it down into your mason jar cut side down. Sprinkle some additional kosher salt on top.
- Repeat cutting and salting and squishing steps with all remaining lemons. As you go, you can tamp the lemons in with the bottom of a spatula. The goal is to encourage the lemons to produce juice.
- When done with lemons, place the pickling weight on top and squish some more. Wait an hour or so for more lemon juice to develop from salting.
- IMPORTANT: After waiting an hour, if the lemon juice does not fully cover the lemons and the weight, take the lemons you set aside at the beginning and juice them. If you run out of lemon juice to cover the lemons, you can use a 5% salt brine. It is very important that the juice/brine covers the lemons and weight entirely! Everything else is flexible!
- Loosely cover with a cheese cloth and check every day or so to make sure the juice still covers the lemons. The first few days, if it doesn’t cover completely, you can squish the weight down some more with your hands until the juice covers the weight. If it doesn’t stay there, add more juice/brine to cover.
- Preserved lemons are ready in 2-6 weeks, depending on the ambient temperature. You know they’re ready if the color has deepened and the liquid has become slightly viscous to the touch (similar to sugar syrup in texture). When they’re ready, you can remove the pickling weight and store for 2+ years in the fridge.
