Call me a fetishist, I find nice cookware downright sexy.

I decided I’d post the recipe I made up Tuesday night, General Shana’s Tempeh, no matter how it came out. Luckily for you it was awesome. I am not remotely interested at this point in taking pictures of food. I didn’t even try on this one:

Here’s the same bowl, but with Sheryl Crow. I think the picture is vastly improved by her inclusion: However, I prefer this super avant garde photo. Doesn’t it look like a delicious Asian swamp of tempeh?

General Shana’s Tempeh

Serves three. Or two reeeeally hungry people.

1/3 c.Bragg’s liquid aminos
1 T sugar
4 T brown rice vinegar
2 T apple cider vinegar
¼ c. cooking wine
1 ½ T sriracha cock sauce
1 ½ T five-spice powder
16 oz kale
10 oz cubed tempeh (here’s my plug for Florida’s own Artie’s Tempeh)
1 coarsely diced diced green/orange pepper (the one I bought was green and orange. I buy multicolored peppers because I like the bang-for-your-buck feeling they give me)
1 ½ - 2 T cornstarch
3 plum tomatoes cut in chunks
2 sliced scallions
Roasted sesame seeds

Mix up Bragg’s, sugar, vinegars, cock sauce, and five spice powder and toss with tempeh and chopped up pepper. Let marinate about 40 minutes. Or longer or shorter, let me know how that goes.

Lightly, lightly steam kale in my grandma’s big old cooking pot.

Add tempeh mixture, cook on medium – lo for 10 minutes.

Gently stir in cornstarch till sauce is smooth and thicker.

Add plum tomatoes and let cook till tomatoes get melty.

Serve on white rice topped with scallions and sesame seeds!

This meal was so good, actually, that I decided to revisit some of the ingredients and make it in a soup form for dinner the next night, to be served with fresh spring rolls. Holy macaroni, I’m freaking brilliant. Don’t let the title deceive you as the soup is in fact both hot and sour. We ate it too fast to take a picture, but trust me when I say it looks like General Shana's Tempeh, just soupier and seitanier. You can have that recipe too:

Vaguely Hot and Ostensibly Sour Soup (as suggested by Timmerz)
Serves three as a main course

4 cups water
2 veggie broth cubes
5 dried shiitake mushrooms
1/4 cup Bragg’s
2 T brown rice vinegar
4 T apple cider vinegar
2 t five spice powder
2 T sriracha
1 T garlic powder
3 cups chopped gai lan or other chopped green vegetable (I was gonna use cabbage I already had in the fridge till I got distracted by the gai lan in the Vietnamese grocery today)
1 diced bell pepper
2 cups seitan cut in skinny strips (I use this recipe but you can wuss out and buy some premade)
1 large tomater, chunked
Sliced scallions, for garnish

Bring water, veggie broth, shrooms, Bragg’s, vinegars, spices, sriracha and garlic powder to boil.

Reduce heat and add gai lan, simmer 5 minutes.

Add seitan, bell pepper and chopped tomato and simmer low and slow 30 more minutes. Taste occasionally to check spices -- I had to make some adjustments as I cooked, like a little extra garlic powder at the end. Now I slurp as I write. MMMMMMph.

Oh yeah, top with those sliced scallions