baked lemon tempeh and curried cous cous

"you went all out," jupiter says to me. i smile. making food that jupiter loves makes me very happy. in fact, making food and sharing it with people i love is a major source of joy in my life.

another thing i like is the "barefoot contessa" (Ina Garten). she has a show on the food network and its is based on her catering/speciality store by the same name in the hamptoms (eastern long island). She does two things that make her one of my culinary heroes: she keeps her preparations and ingredients simple and fresh and she always makes her food with a person or occasion in mind and then shares the food with them. i can forgive her overuse of mayonnaise and butter. if you watch the show you have a sense of who she cooks for, her life, her friends; it is much more real and endearing than most cooking shows and she's chubby and cute (never trust a skinny chef).

so, i recently bought one of her cookbooks and i tried two of her recipes for the first time last night. the tempeh recipe was a recipe for chicken that i modified and the curried cous cous recipe i modified slightly. both turned out so well i have decided to share them.

baked lemon tempeh

2 packages of tempeh

3 lemons juiced (1/2 cup juice)

1/2 cup olive oil

1 tablespoon miced fresh thyme leaves

2 teaspoons kosher salt

1 teaspoon fresh ground pepper

cut the tempeh into strips 1/3 inch thick. combine all of the ingredients in a bowl and allow tempeh to marinate overnight. place the tempeh strips in a 9 x 13 baking dish and bake at 400 degrees until crispy on the bottom and golden on top.

curried cous cous

1 1/2 cups cous cous (i use the whole wheat cous cous from trader joes)

1 tablespoon unsalted butter

1 1/2 cups boiling water

1/4 plain nonfat yogurt

1/4 olive oil

1 teaspoon red wine vinegar

1 teaspoon curry powder

1 1/2 teaspoons kosher salt

1 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper

1/2 cup shredded carrots (small hole on the grater)

1/4 cup minced, flesh flat leaf parsley

1/2 cup minced golden raisins

1/4 cup pine nuts

1 scallion thinly sliced

Place the cous cous in a bowl. Melt the butter in the boiling water and pour over the cous cous. cover tightly and allow the cous cous to soak up the water for five minutes.

Whisk together the yogurt, olive oil, vinegar, curry powder, salt and pepper. Fluff up the cous cous with a fork and mix in the sauce. Add the carrots, parsley, raisins, pine nuts and scallions. Adjust salt and pepper to taste and serve at room temperature.

These recipes meet my three requirements for the food i make: yummy, fast and cheap.