The kefir grains are here.   I am excited as well as scared!  One reviewer on amazon.com said they are like pets and need to be fed every day and washed and stuff.   Hope the little critters, I mean, cultures, like our home.

Speaking of cultures, we have decided to do a series on cultured foods for the next few weeks.  We will explore fermented and cultured foods, how to make them, how to enjoy them and what benefits they provide.

This weekend, V picked a dish from Leda Scheintaub’s Cultured Foods for Your Kitchen.  It uses tempeh as the featured ferment as well as other supporting ferments like apple cider vinegar, tamari sauce and fermented chili bean sauce.

Tempeh in Coconut Chili Sauce

Tempeh is a soybean ferment native to Indonesia.  It is usually not eaten raw, so, you might ask, what is healthy about tempeh if we have killed off the live cultures.  Fermentation has been used by our ancestors not only for the good bacteria, but also to make food more digestible and nutrients more bio-available to us.  In the case of tempeh, the process of fermentation reduces the phytic acid in soy beans, making it healthier.

(As an aside, in general, with any type of grains or beans, it is a good idea to soak in water overnight or at least for a few hours before cooking.  For example, if I am making a batch of brown rice, I always soak it the night before and change the water out before cooking.  If I am making hummus, I soak the chickpeas for up to day and change the water out a couple of times.)

The tempeh dish I made turned out to be wildly fragrant and flavorful, thanks to all the herbs from our garden, my addition to the original recipe.  It’s spring time and I got a bunch of spring garlic from the garden.  (I never have the patience to let it mature).  I also added lemongrass because I had so much of it.  (It is like a weed,  I got like 50 stalks from just 2 stalks that a friend had given me a year back!)     I also changed the recipe to use seasonally-available vegetables.

Lemon grass, and spring garlic from the garden

It seems like a complex recipe, but once you have all the ingredients lined up, it’s quite simple actually.

Recipe for Tempeh in Coconut Chili Sauce
Adapted from Leda Scheintaub’s Cultured Foods for Your Kitchen

[Printable Recipe]

Makes enough for 2 servings as main dish over rice
Ingredients:

• 3 Tbsp coconut oil
• 1 8 oz package of organic tempeh, sliced in to medium-sized pieces (I used Lightlife brand from Whole Foods Market. Use organic to avoid GMO soy.)
• 1 tsp chili powder
• 4 inch piece lemongrass cut into 1 inch pieces and smashed a bit to release flavor
• 1 red onion, sliced
• 1 inch piece ginger, peeled and grated
• 3-4 cloves garlic, minced
• 2 Tbsp raw apple cider vinegar
• 1 tsp tamari sauce
• 1 tsp brown sugar
• 1/4 cup water
• 3/4 cup organic coconut milk 
• 2 Tbsp fermented chili bean sauce (available in Asian grocery stores, optionally use 1 Tbsp of any chili sauce or chili-garlic sauce)
• 10 stalks of tender asparagus, cut in to 1 inch pieces after discarding the bottom woody part
• 1 medium carrot, cut in to thin 1 inch sticks
• 1 bunch swiss chard, leaves and stalks separately chopped
• 1 Tbsp lemon juice
• 1 bunch of tender spring garlic, chopped (optionally use 1 stalk of spring onion, chopped)
• 2 sprigs of cilantro, chopped
• Salt to taste

Method:

Tempeh in Coconut Chili Sauce

A aromatic dish that you probably won’t have left overs of!  Let me know if you have tried to use tempeh and what your favorite recipes are.