If I was hosting a vegan thanksgiving this year, this would absolutely be on the menu. I was inspired by the ingredients in my fridge to create a yummy protein-filled dish inspired by Angelica Kitchen's famous, and fabulous, open-faced tempeh sandwich. (This awesome vegan restaurant has a cookbook, available on their site, and their recipe is on p.175.) I merely tweaked the marinade a bit, subbed mashed cauliflower for the mashed potatoes, and used a different gravy recipe using chickpea flour instead of rice flour.
This could easily be converted to gluten free by subbing in a wheat-free soy sauce. Everything really came out delicious -- the tempeh had sort of a buttery quality (in a good way), and the cauliflower tasted sublime with the gravy. I'm gonna pat my back on this one -- *pat pat* -- even if it wasn't totally my recipe -- what a feast! And meat-luvr Husband V actually devoured it -- and he hates tempeh. So yeah, awesome all around! Well, Toddler V was too picky to eat this, but back in the day, he LOVED this mashed cauliflower so I would try feeding it to your littles.
Note: If you're big eaters at all, I'd definitely double the recipe. My husband the human vacuum cleaner was licking his plate clean and sad when we ran out. And that was with me holding back a bit...not cool, not cool.
Marinated Tempeh with Mashed Cauliflower Platter
Prepare the following:
Marinated Tempeh
1 lb tempeh
1/3 cup olive oil
2/3 cup apple cider vinegar
1/4 cup soy sauce, tamari, or Bragg's aminos
2 tbs agave syrup
Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Slice the tempeh into thin slices. Place the slices in a single layer in a glass lasagna pan. Pour marinade over it. Bake until the marinade is all sucked up, about 35 minutes. The tempeh will look nice and brown.
Meanwhile, prepare both of the following:
Mashed Cauliflower
1 large head Cauliflower
1/2 cup Earth Balance or to taste
1/4 cup Nutritional Yeast or to taste
1-3 cloves garlic, whole (opt.)
salt or garlic salt to taste
ground pepper to taste
Rinse, and take the leaves and core off of cauliflower. Cut an "X" into the bottom, and place it into a small amount of water in a large pot. Cover and steam on medium low until soft. Add whole cloves of garlic to the water if desired. Place cauliflower and optional garlic cloves in a large bowl. Mash with a potato masher, add Earth Balance and mash some more. Add all seasonings and mash until smooth. You can use a blender if you want this reeeaallly smooooth.
Vegan Chickpea Flour Gravy
I used this recipe, with the following changes:
---Reduced the veggie broth amount to 3 cups
--Eliminated the ginger.
--Didn't use unsalted veggie broth, coz I kind of love salt.
--Added a few tablespoons of nutritional yeast
--Threw in some parsley
--Some more specific cooking directions: after adding broth, bring to a boil, then lower the heat and simmer gently until desired thickness is reached, slowly. This is so good, you will want to eat the leftovers with a spoon (ahem...not that I did that..)
To assemble the platter/feast:
Place a scoop of mashed cauliflower in the center of the plate with tempeh slices coming out of it like spokes of a wheel. Cover cauliflower with gravy so that it runs down into the plate for tempeh dipping. Garish with dried or fresh parsley.
And have a Happy Thanksgiving! Just kidding.
