Italian Herb Tempeh Saute, Vegetable Noodles, with Backyard Herb Pesto

Magical Spring Garden Goodness.....

The flavors of this dish were phenomenal. What a beautiful plate of food, packed with nutrition. It never gets old to incorporate wild plants+garden herbs in our cooking here at the tempeh test kitchen. In the pesto, we used mint, lemon balm, wild sorrel and dill-lots of lemon, garlic and white miso. Beautiful.

I love pasta but Spring inspires lighter meals. It's easy to use a vegetable peeler to create long noodle-like pieces with your veggies-zucchini and carrots work well! What's even more interesting about this recipe is how we cooked the tempeh. It's not a newly invented technique but I normally pan fry, which uses a lot more oil. This time we used only a little oil to brown minced tempeh and then added stock. This will soften the tempeh, which a lot of folks prefer. Here's what we did-

Ingredients:

2 Ten ounce cakes of Italian herb white bean and sunflower tempeh-thawed and minced into small pieces

1/2 Vidalia(or other) onion

1/2 Red bell pepper

1 cup halved cherry tomatoes

1 cup stock

2 T oil

2 T balsamic or white balsamic vinegar

1 sprig rosemary

Salt and pepper to taste

1. Saute the sliced onions in a pan when the oil gets hot. When they start to change color, add the minced tempeh and the sprig of rosemary. Cook 3-5 minutes on medium heat until you see some browning.

2. Add the bell pepper and tomatoes-cook another few minutes until tender. Add balsamic sssssssss.

3. Add stock, salt and pepper to taste and let simmer for 10 minutes.

Very simple and now you are ready to build a beautiful dish. Whether you use regular pasta or vegetable noodles, pesto or a dollop of our sun dried tomato aioli, you've got the base!