It is very interesting to look at wrapping of street food, which came from mobility and convenience of carrying food with you on street and eat them in a more elegant way. You may not have noticed, or given it a second think, but this wrapping layer is actually both your eating tool and food itself.
Most, as far as I know, street food has a starch-based wrap: Baozi, Rou Jia Mo in China, doner in Turkey, and corn ice cream everywhere! However, protein based wrap is rare, despite the fact that there are stuffed Tofu in some dishes. Probably this is because protein based wrap is harder to make and preserve.
Given Mediamatic Eten’s great neighbour Clean Lab’s effort on making tempeh into a bowl, eating food with protein container is now possible. However, if tempeh can be developed into more interesting shapes like a roll or a wrap, it has a potential in street food package as well. Imagine, one day we are probably going to eat ice cream with a dried tempeh corn. Not just ice cream or existing street food, it’s important to develop new recipe to create best combination between food and its wrap.
We tested the drying of two fresh tempeh bowls made previously with 50 grams of boiled lupin beans. The purpose is to if dehydration technique can be used to form the tempeh.
Tempeh Rolls up before Dehydration 2 -
Tempeh Rolls up before Dehydration 3 -
Tempeh Rolls up before Dehydration 1 -
We can see that a fresh tempeh bowl is very pliable, but can only be a bowl shape without external force. Then, they were put in a dehydration machine under average temperature around 50˚C in 2 different shapes.
After 3 hours, I took them out of the drying place because they were crunchy on most surface.
Dehydrated 40g Tempeh Bowl Front View -
They became tanned, much less in weight and thickness.
The bowl shape is almost dehydrated all around, while the roll shape still has some wet part on the inner surface. This can be desired sometimes for a certain texture purpose. It can be unwanted as well. But it is interesting.
Dehydrated 40g Tempeh Roll Inner Surface -
Having these 2 shapes in hand is playful, because how I held them gave a hint of in what way I would eat the food with them.
Dehydrated 40g Tempeh Roll Play with 1 -
Dehydrated 40g Tempeh Roll Play with 2 -
Dehydrated 40g Tempeh Roll Play with 3 -
Dehydrated 40g Tempeh Bowl Play with 1 -
Dehydrated 40g Tempeh Bowl Play with 2 -
The next question would be, what will Chef Thor say about this new shape of tempeh roll?