Szechuan Tempeh and Green Beans with Hmong Cabbage

Thursday, February 13

Szechuan Tempeh and Green Beans with Hmong Cabbage

Rating: 4.5

I really didn’t cook this week because Seth was staying at a hotel near his office so he could get to work more easily during Icepocalypse, aka Pax. I may or may not have had a vegan bacon cheeseburger with frozen French fries one night. Processed food for the win! Anyway, since his healthy eating options were pretty limited too, the one thing he requested for dinner was vegetables. I had already planned to make the Szechuan Tempeh and Green Beans recipe from Robin Robertson's One Dish Vegan, which is quickly becoming one of my favorite books. Since I planned this and bought groceries before the impending doom of the storm was pretty much a certainty, I was all set to go. I’m usually pretty bad at working with tempeh, but Seth has been on a bit of a kick for it lately, so I’ve been trying to find recipes from sources I trust and seem pretty fool-proof. This one fit the bill, and I have to say is actually one of the easiest dishes I have ever cooked. I cooked the beans for a little longer than the recipe indicated because Seth tends to like his beans a little more well-done, but they were still crisp and delicious. It’s a little spicy, and I thought it was the perfect amount of heat, but Seth added some sriracha to his. The tempeh was perfect - flavorful and soft and yummy. We served the beans and tempeh over brown rice, which I cooked in vegetable broth to give it a little extra flavor. Honestly, I really think this recipe alone is worth owning the book for. Also, you can swap out asparagus or broccoli for the green beans if that’s your preference. I had some cabbage on hand from the slaw we’d made last week, so I decided to add the cabbage to the menu to bulk up the meal and get more veggies into it as well. The recipe was in the first issue of Veg News I ever bought, which was actually right before we went vegan. It’s really simple – thinly sliced purple cabbage (I added a little green to finish out the head) and a few cloves of minced garlic sautéed in vegetable oil and seasoned with an 1/8 teaspoon of white pepper. The pepper gives it a nice bite and has a really unique flavor. This time I added a little bit of sliced red onion to it as well and I really liked it, so I’ll probably do that again whenever I make this. It’s so easy, I don’t know why I don’t make it more often. I should fix that.