nancys-photos-071 Happy New Year to one and all!  This is one of my favorite things to make and it is amazingly simple as well.  Sometimes I just want to cook something where I can just use 1 or 2 dishes or pots and be done with it.  I usually make one pot stew/soup dishes but I was not in the mood for that.  This is a one dish and one skillet meal.  I mix my marinade in the same dish that I marinate in.  I don’t even wash the dish I marinated in and use that dish as my serving dish.  What can be easier than that?  The photo shown above is one serving.  Perhaps you are saying to yourself, “that seems to be quite a large salad for one person”  or maybe not.  But if you are, I will tell you why.  When I was growing up my mother made a jumbo sized salad every night to go with our dinner.  I don’t mean a regular sized mixing bowl of salad, I mean a punch bowl sized salad.  And we would eat it all, um, we would eat a lot of it and my dad would eat most of it.  As I have gotten older, I have also been prone to making myself large salads and consuming them for my main meal along with a protein of some kind.  Since I have moved away from eating animal protein (except for some fish ordinarily) I have swapped it for beans or tempeh usually.  I hope you like it as much as me.  I can usually find tempeh in Trader Joe’s or my local health food store.  I always buy the organic and non GMO one.  You can also make your salad with many more ingredients than I have or you can serve your tempeh with some brown rice or in a wrap with sprouts and greens.  The choice is yours!

Tempeh

1 8oz. pkg. of tempeh cut into 4 pieces and then cut in half through the middle
3 tblsp. honey
3 tblsp. soy sauce
1 tsp. umeboshi plum vinegar/rice vinegar
1 tsp. toasted sesame oil
1 tsp. finely chopped/grated fresh ginger
3 cloves finely chopped/grated garlic
1 tsp. black sesame seeds

Mix everything except for the sesame seeds in a dish large enough to accomodate all pieces of tempeh (I used an 8 inch round Pyrex pie dish).  Put the tempeh in the dish in one layer to coat and then flip over.  Stick in the fridge to marinate for at least 30 min. and as much as overnight.  Flip the pieces over a few times.  When ready to cook use a grill pan or regular skillet.  Coat skill bottom with a teaspoon or two of olive oil over medium heat.  Cook until golden brown and a little toasty on each side.  Take off heat to cool for a few minutes.  That’s it you’re done!

Salad

For my salad I put a few large handfuls of mixed greens in the dish I marinated the tempeh in.  I peeled and cut a carrot and cut it into thin coins and tossed those on the greens.  I sprinkled a bit of olive oil, toasted sesame oil, and umeboshi plum vinegar on top and mixed the greens around and topped the salad with half of the tempeh.  I’ll eat the rest of the tempeh on rice tomorrow for lunch.