This is Barry. He makes tasty, organic tempeh together with his business partner, Gordon. Although the website for Barry’s Tempeh is “growninbrooklyn.com”, the tempeh is actually made in Queens at The E-Space, a communal industrial kitchen in Long Island City. (You can read more about other exciting things going on at the Queens E-space kitchen here and here.) Barry, Gordon and their assistant Bessie, make tempeh every few weeks at the E-Space for a long afternoon/evening and I was fortunate to tag along with them for one shift last month. Barry is an interesting dude, and I loved talking with him and the rest of the Tempeh Team throughout the night. The process – soak beans, grind beans, cook beans, drain beans, mix in culture, bag tempeh, label tempeh – was repeated with each of the 3 versions of the commercial tempeh they sell in stores and markets around the city, as well with a couple of experimental flavors that Barry was working with. All of Barry’s Tempeh flavors are vegan, two are gluten-free (soy/oat/barley has gluten), and the white bean/brown rice is both gluten- and soy-free, so there is something for everyone. Most importantly, all of their tempeh is delicious and made with the upmost respect for the ingredients.
And now, making tempeh: You start with beans.
Lots and lots and lots of beans that have been soaked overnight. Barry’s Tempeh uses both soy beans and white beans.
The beans are drained.
They they are ground with a huge meat grinder.
These are white beans.
The beans are then cooked in the biggest braiser you’ve ever seen. While the beans are cooked, the foam is skimmed off the top. I’ve mentioned before how much I love the zen of skimming, so I was thrilled to contribute to the tempeh-making process by skimming. And skimming and skimming. Once the beans cook for about 20-40 minutes (soy beans take longer to cook than white beans), the cooked beans are drained and placed into custom-made mesh bags which make it easier to squeeze out all the excess cooking water.
Meanwhile, oats, barley and brown rice are roasted. I wish this blog had smell-o-vision; the delicious roasting smell permeated the whole kitchen, even taking over the cookies being made in another part of the kitchen.
No, this is not a bag of ashes, it’s the starter culture. The culture is added to each batch of drained beans and mixed in with a large stand mixer. Large is an understatement. Humongous is an understatement. Here is Gordon mixing up a batch. Gordon is not a small guy, it’s that the mixer is HUGE.
Once the tempeh is mixed with the starter, it is weighed out and stuffed into perforated zip-lock bags (1 lb each). Once the bags are filled and labeled, they are placed on metal grates and eventually loaded into bread-proofer (I think that’s what it’s called) where the tempeh culture really does it’s thing on it’s overnight slumber. Barry likes to stay overnight and keep his eye on the tempeh. According to Gordon, Barry eats the tempeh the next day for breakfast. THAT’S quality control! For a recipe idea of what to do with Barry’s Tempeh, see Part I. For locations where you can buy Barry’s Tempeh, click here. And here is a great video highlighting Barry and the tempeh-making process by Liza de Guia at Food. Curated.
Barry was nice enough to give me my own little dose of starter so I can experiment with tempeh-making at home. My CSA’s bean share from Cayuga Pure Organics will be starting soon, so I’ll wait until I have enough beans to make a few pounds of tempeh, since Barry said that it’s really not worth it to do in small batches, and hey, you never know… maybe there will be a Part III of this tempeh series?!
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Kicking Up The Pantry With Preserved Lemons
Lemons + salt = sunshiney day.
Preserved lemons are a relatively new addition to my pantry since my friend’s mother, Josiane, coached me through making my first batch last year. Josiane is Moroccan, and assured me they were easy to make, and essential to have on hand. How right she was! Once they were in my fridge, they made their way into a range of tasty recipes from dressings to salads to soups to marinades, just as Josi predicted. Their taste is kinda lemony, duh, but also SO much more. The salt brings out the umph in the lemon, while in some ways minimizing the acidity. One medium-sized jar lasted almost a full year, even though I did not shy away from putting the pungent slivered rinds into everything. And when I ran out, we were smack in the middle of wintery citrus season, and it seemed like a great time to put up another batch. The “recipe” doesn’t have any amounts, and Josi said that it’s really just salt and lemons; you’ll need a clean glass jar and sharp knife as well. Using organic lemons here is super-important since the only part you do eat is the rind, and non-organic lemons are sprayed with tons of waxes and sealants. Not tasty.
First, wash the lemons. I mean, they are organic, but you don’t know who has touched them, right? Next, cut the lemons into connected-quarters, meaning don’t cut all the way through to the other side. It should look like a 4-petaled flower/lemon. Then, stuff about 1 tablespoon of salt into each lemon, doing your best to get it into each slice, and place the salted lemon in a clean jar. When you transfer the lemons to the jar, some of the salt will fall out and into the jar – it’s all good. Keep doing this with all the lemons, tamping down with a wooden spoon or your fingers. I use a muddler, which really gets the lemons crunched in there well. If you need to, you can cut some lemons in half (still with the extra quarter-slice), salt them, then squeeze them into the awkward corners of the jar to get the jar stuffed to capacity. The point is to fill every nook of available space with lemons, and get the lemons to release some of their juices so they are totally covered. If that doesn’t happen when the jar is filled with lemons, top it off with some freshly squeezed lemon juice.
Once the lemons are all cozy in the jar and the level of juice is above the lemons, close the jar and leave it in a cool place for about 7-10 days. For the first few days, open the jar and re-tamp down on the lemons; you’ll see the lemons will let off a lot of juice over the first week, so it’s a good idea to put the jar over a plate in case the juice erupts, which happened to me! After a week or so, place the jar in the refrigerator, and wait another 2-3 weeks before you use them. You’ll know when the time is right – the lemon rinds become a bit translucent-seeming (I say seeming because they’re still completely opaque, they just seem translucent), and you’ll be able to cut through the rind with a fork.
To use, take a quarter out of the jar, and remove the pulp, which will be easy-peasy, it just peels right off. Since 99% of the dishes that call for preserved lemon use only the rind, in general, I discard to pulp, rinse the rind, and julienne into strips or dice finely. (One fish tagine I made used both the rind and the pulp – what a lemony treat that was!) Where to use these umphy sunshine strips of preserved goodness? A great rule of thumb is to throw some in to any dish that you use lemon juice in, like salads, stews and dressings. I used preserved lemons in my chopped Israeli salads all last year, and it really freshened up the whole dish. I used some yesterday in an eggplant tomato stew and it imparted a lightness to the otherwise heavy meal.
I posed the question on our Facebook page: “What pantry staple do you keep on hand to kick up your dishes?” and I got great responses: anchovies, peanut butter, sesame oil, picked garlic, dulse flakes, and cumin. Stay tuned for more in this series, and learn how to create some of these pantry staples, as well as fun, tasty ways to use them.