The ingredients
Tonight was my first time following along with CEimB. It was fun because I pulled Ted in to help since he is the meat eater. He couldn’t wait…so excited for REAL meat! You see I always try to sneak my vegetarian meat substitutes past him. Never works. 🙁 If you don’t want to read the entire procedure, the review for this recipe, from Ted of course because he ate the meat, was “very good“. From my point of view, it was an easy recipe to prepare.
For my part in this recipe, I substituted Tempeh for the beef. I’m sure there was a better vegetarian sub out there, but I think I used up all my imagination efforts on an up coming cake order. Anyway.. job at hand….our preparation went something like this:
- Began the sauce at 5 PM. Dinner was on the table by 6:15 PM.
- The ingredient substitutions were Vegetable Broth for Beef Broth and most of the wine. I only had about 1/2 cup of Red Wine available. As you can see, I used pre-minced garlic (time saver).
- Chopped shallots, carrots, celery and cooked in my infused olive oil (sundried tomato + crushed garlic clove + dill).
- The sauce took the exact time indicated in the recipe – 40 minutes.
- After the sauce was on, I pan seared my Tempeh, which I left as a whole 8 oz slab, 2 minutes per side (not 5 per side as we did for the beef) . Set it aside and got Ted to work with the beef. He seared it in the infused EVOO 5 min. per side and popped it in the oven with the temp. indicater stuck in. It was only a 1lb piece so we needed to watch the temperature carefully. The meat cooked at 425. The Tempeh cooked at 400.
- For the vegetable, I followed along with the picture and cooked green beans with sliced baby bellas. I added 2 TBS of the cooking sauce to the bottom of the vegetable baking dish. Added the beans and ‘shrooms. Added 4 more TBS of sauce on top, covered with foil and cooked at 400 in the same oven with the Tempeh.
- Cooking time to a temperature (for the beef) of 140 degrees (med-rare) was about 25 minutes for 1lb. After the meat was done, we removed it, covered with foil while I finished the sauce with rosemary and cocoa.
The comments: Ted: “Mmmmm…. good.” “Is this the first time you cooked sauce like this?” Joanne: “I don’t do sauce. So.. Yeah.” Ted: “The sauce is lite so the flavor of the meat isn’t masked.” Joanne: “I wish I had had more Red Wine it would have given it more flavor also the beef broth may have made the sauce more robust in flavor“. I don’t buy chicken or beef broth any more so that won’t happen in any recipe. But we usually do have more wine than I did tonight. What happened there?! Whose been nipping at the wine bottle?
Joanne's substitute for meat
The last comment of the night while cleaning up, which tells you something about any sauce I have tried was… Ted: “Hey! The sauce didn’t even stick to the pan!”
Ted preparing the meat
Tempeh with Rosemary and Chocolate
Hey Joanne…you did an awesome job for your first post. I am glad that you and your husband enjoyed it. We did too! I have actually never even heard of tempeh. We are so far from being vegetarians though. Again, great post!!
Hey Joanne…you did an awesome job for your first post. I am glad that you and your husband enjoyed it. We did too! I have actually never even heard of tempeh. We are so far from being vegetarians though. Again, great post!!
That looks delicious!
Your dinner looks fantastic. I’ve used tempeh a few times and enjoyed it. What a great use for it in the CEiMB recipe, thanks!
Thanks Guys! I was fun. When I first looked at the recipe I thought it would take a while but it didn’t and it really was no harder than anything else I make. The sauce was good experience for me and taught me something more about reductions.
Looks good!
A quick trick for wine that I learned from Nigella Lawson – when you realize you have just a glass or under left, pour it into a little plastic baggie and freeze it. It works! It’s hard to tell how much you have, then, but it honestly works.
I think yours looks delicious. I have never heard of tempeh however. And I’m really loving Macduff’s idea there about freezing the leftover wine. It seems we always have just a half a glass left over and what to do with it when you are already full? Your sauce looks fabulous!
Macduff: Thanks for that great wine trick! It sure will save a lot of room on my counter. When we don’t finish a bottle (oh a sin!), I leave it on the kitchen island to use during the week in my cooking.
Peggy: I prefer Tempeh to Tofu because it is a solid soy product. It’s easy to use although you might be disgusted with the look of it. I recommend reading about it so you don’t get any surprises should you decide to try it. I think I have a link on my side bar.
Wow- that is really impressive. I just skipped this recipe because I don’t eat beef, but I am really interested in how this would taste witl tempeh. I might have to try the sauce, it looks great!
Definately use more sauce on the tempeh.
I only do the meat because, even though I won’t eat it, I enjoy cooking for Ted.
Wow. I am glad the sauce worked out on something besides beef. I am not a huge meat eater either but Mark loves it so I cook it!
A note from Sue who made the dinner using Venison
Hi Jo,
I made the tenderloin with the Rosemary choc. Sauce. It was really good. Sam loved it and we have leftovers for later. I’m trying to send a picture of it, we’ll see if it will work for me. I had my favorite sautéed veggies with it ie, yellow squash, zucchini, mushrooms and spinach. My “plating” wasn’t as good as yours (I thought the sauce dribbles looks a lot like something else). Any way here it is. Thanks for the recipe.
Love, sue.