Inspired by our last experiment with Tempehzza, we wanted to use tempeh sheet to cover juicy vegetables to make a closed dish. In order to have a high contrast of texture in mouth, some chunky and juicy vegetables are chosen with the recommendation of Chef Thor from Mediamatic ETEN: eggplants, asparagus, beetroots and parsnips.
Ingredients for cooking tempeh sheets - Eggplants, beetroots, parsnip and asparagus
The vegetables were pre-baked, since their cooking time is way longer than the thin tempeh sheets. And then they are laid out in lines on baking paper.
Kamile preparing vegetables for tempeh dinner -
we cover the tempeh sheets on top of the vegetables, and let the sheet fall over them, to form an organic shape. As you can see, the tempeh sheet covers the vegetables underneath so you don't really have an idea of what you are going to eat. The three dishes from left to right are starter, main course and a dessert.
After baking for 20 minutes, we found that the tempeh sheets were so hard to get fully crispy by just baking, since apart from the edge parts, the sheet was still kind of soft. That's why we tried to use a blow torch to burn the surface. We also put sugar on top of the dessert piece so it can have a crispy caramel taste.
Using Burner to coat Bulgur Tempeh Cover -
Finally, the three-course dinner is ready to be tasted!
Here are the feedbacks:
1. Beetroots reinforce something unpleasant; parsnips and asparagus are nice in combination with the tempeh.
2. Try to blench the vegetables instead of pre-bake them because less steps to prepare are necessary for the flow of the kitchen work.
3. Tempeh sheets should be more crispy and interesting to have parsnip dressing.
Generally speaking, Chef Thor and Willem were quite happy with this version. They both liked the taste combination of sweet and tart of the starter and dessert.
The next step to improve the recipe is to make the tempeh sheet really crispy and can serve as a eating tool.