Years and years and years ago, as a college sophomore, I took a yoga class for a semester and one of the final projects was to contribute a dish to a potluck lunch. Such a cool class†, right? Naturally I spent my time in class sleeping, just like all my classmates. Ahem, it’s called “the corpse pose”, people. Anyhoo, the potluck lunch thingie sounded like a breeze but it was challenging for me at the same time because of the vegetarian criteria. It was the ultimate hipster class.
After giving it some thought and doing some mental sketches, I decided to make Tempeh Maki because it’d impress my lecturer and I’d bag the credits no-problemo. It turned out purrrty fantastic and everyone in class, including my lecturer, raved about what I made. I was skipping on cloud nine and felt mighty dang clever for coming up with something so healthy, so hipster, so so so so so. That was also the first time I made something ‘fusion’ since tempeh is a fermented Indonesian soy product and used it in a Japanese-style handroll.
Fast forward xxx years later, after picking up sheet tempeh at a supermarket spree in Surabaya recently, I made tempeh maki again but I’m subbing brown rice with quinoa this time. I think of it as Tempeh Maki 2.0.
Presenting: Tempeh Quinoa Maki.
I’m not publishing the recipe in this post since I’m still exploring this and want to include other ingredients next time. In this version I used tom yum paste because all the other ingredients are bland as a cardboard. I’ve also included shredded crab stick, it’s not 100% vegetarian. I will continue tweaking this idea and publish tempeh maki 3.0. In the meantime entertain yourself with the short assembly video I made.
Ohmmmmmmm…. nomz,
MB.
† What a progressive university degree program this was, eh? Where else can you earn university credits by completing a yoga class and attend a potluck lunch for finals, huh? Art school rocked! Of course, the school I’m talking about is New York Fashion Institute of Technology.
