First time with Tempeh

During a recent trip to Chicago, I discovered several vegetarian or vegetarian-friendly restaurants. At one of them, I had a nice tempeh "steak" with swiss shard. This weekend, I was finally at home and able to host dinner for a couple good friends. I figured I'd try to cook a main dish around tempeh for the first time. It all worked out well enough, and tempeh is easy to handle. Like a garden burger, you just have to warm it up. It's heavier than tofu or seitan, and supposedly easier to digest due to certain microorganisms involved in creating tempeh. Like tofu, it inherits flavors during cooking or serving. In short, I sauteed onions, garlic, and ginger in a big fry pan. I added green chard and red bell peppers, and a vegetable broth with soy sauce (I was sort of following several recipes at the same time). I tried thickening the sauce with corn starch, but gave up when it didn't really seem to matter. Separately, I grilled portabella caps in the broiler. Finally, I fried the tempeh in a fry pan with soy sauce until it was warmed through and nicely browned, and served the tempeh covered in the vegetables. The flavor was good, but it was really heavy. I learned that you can completely overcook swiss chard, and it still tastes and looks good.

I wanted to make a salad based around butternut squash, since it was fall. I was inspired by something I had at work, and ended up following a Fine Cooking recipe. The squash was chopped into 1cm cubes, mixed with a little maple syrup and oil, and roasted for 30 minutes. A variety of bitter leafy vegetables (which counter the sweat maple syrup and caramelized onions) were treated with a sweet sherry-maple vinaigrette (which was based on peanut oil). The leaves were plated first, followed by the warm squash mixture, and topped with roasted goat cheese. This salad was fabulous -- I can say that humbly because I just put it together, and the mostly-raw ingredients did all the work. It also looked nice, with the red radicchio, pale yellow Belgian endives, green basil (not in the recipe), yellow-orange squash, and unknown purple leafy thing I picked up because it looked pretty.

My friends brought over a homemade pear tart with vanilla ice cream. You can't beat that for the finale.

One warning: tempeh is really heavy. I made way too much food.