Vegan MoFo: Eggplant Tempeh Potpie (E is for Eggplant)

Brief post today... my house is full of eggplant enthusiasts, so it was the natural choice for the letter E. An obvious choice, some might say, but when you see what we have in store in the next couple of letters, I think maybe you'll let us slide for being a little lazy with E...

It's Wednesday, aka farmer's market day, so a bonus bonus picture today. Here's our farmer's market haul. It will not give you basically any hints about what else we're having this week, heh.



I've been poring over The Vegan Table by Colleen Patrick-Goudreau, looking for something to make this week that would fit into my alphabet challenge. VT has some other interesting eggplant stuff in it, but when I saw the potpie recipe, it called out to me-- it looked so fast and easy and yum. So I went ahead with it.

From experience, I know eggplant doesn't often end up being visible in a dish after cooking, so I took a picture of it still in its recognizable state:



Then while sauteeing with tempeh, sauce, and other stuff:



The potpie just out of the oven:



And yes, it definitely IS the same casserole dish that's shown up in 3 out of 5 of my MoFo posts so far. That thing gets around! (We are not yet done the dill mac'n'cheez; I took some of it for lunch today and will take some more for lunch tomorrow. For the record, it's a bit greasy when it reheats, alas. Very tasty though.)

And here's a piece in my dish:



You'll have to excuse the smudges around the edge of the plate; while I was photographing this, the Emperor was twirling the bowl around and grabbing chunks of tempeh out and eating them. Well, anything to get him to eat some dinner, I guess...

So, about this recipe: it is really, really, really, really easy. I started out with an hour to prep and cook and went at a very leisurely pace, and it got done just as my time ran out. Taste: okay. Not spectacular. I think I'd double the fennel next time because I really liked that note-- but could barely detect it. You know I love bready things and so the biscuit top seemed like a sure win... and it WAS tasty... but I actually felt like there was too much biscuit: filling.

The Emperor seemed to like it when he was eating it off of my plate. Naturally, he refused to eat it off his own plate. J has a stomach ache and skipped dinner so he has no input.

Overall: a simple, tasty dinner, but not actually a great showcase dish for my friend the eggplant.

Your daily bonus picture. No, I don't know why he always looks so skeptical in food pictures these days. This was after he had already eaten several tempeh cubes and told me they were "really yummy, really tasty! sooooo tasty!" Who knows?