Black Pepper Tempeh

I just got a new cookbook: Super Natural Every Day from Heidi Swanson. I leafed through the cookbook and a lot of things look interesting and yummy. This is one of them.

I've tried to make tempeh several times but it's never really good. The recipe on the back of the package tells you to pan fried it with a little bit of oil and 2 Tbsp of soy sauce, until browned. I don't know you can just rely on soy sauce as the only seasoning, except maybe sushi, but even then I still need wasabi and pickled ginger. In the end the tempeh is usually pretty oily and blah tasting.

But let's back up for a second. What is tempeh?

Tempeh is a soy product originating from Indonesia. Similar to tofu in that it's made of soybean, but tempeh has different nutrition and texture than tofu. Tempeh, or tempe as it is called in Indonesia, is made by naturally culturing and controlling the fermentation process that binds soybeans into a cake form. Tempeh is used worldwide in vegetarian cuisine and can usually be found in the vegetarian section of your grocery store. You can read more about tempeh and see pictures of several tempeh dishes here on Wikipedia.