Tempeh bourguignon ... such a suprise!

Now, this is a twist of what we prepared for our Xmas dinner at Ernst's place (mushroom bourguignon with butternut squash purée) ... we happened to find  a big chunk of tempeh for just 2 euros and to have some of the wine we had used for the Xmas marinade still in the fridge - we put two and two together and came up with a recipe that could combine both of them ...

we started by marinating the chopped up tempeh in some red wine with thyme and rosemary for about one hour ... in the meantime, we chopped onions, shallots, garlic and carrots in big chunks and slowly cooked them in a little olive oil for about twenty minutes, until they were nice and soft ... we added some sugar, to caramelise them, then we added the tempeh (saving the juice) and cooked the whole lot slowly for about 10 minutes, then we added some concentrated tomato and started adding the wine, whilst turning up the heat to make the alcohol evaporate (you want the aroma, you don't want to get drunk) ... at the end, we added some chopped tomatoes and waited until they wilted and finally, a little bit of flour, to make the whole lot nice and creamy ... you can see the result below:

we served it with some polenta (the quick kind, just made with salty water) and it was nutty and flavoursome and just very, very good! definitely a nice way to use the otherwise a bit dull but very healthy tempeh ...