The Secret Ingredient: Tempeh

With Lagusta Yearwood!

The first Myco Film Festival hosted by the New York Mycological Society will be two weeks from now at SVA Theater in NYC! I’ll be providing pre-screening snacks like these mushroom rugelach (recipe sent out today for paid subscribers). More mushroom events coming up in October, so stay tuned.

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I first walked into Commissary! in New Paltz right after sky-diving, so my emotions were (you might say) heightened. I was immediately smitten by the mitzvah wall (buy a treat and describe the imagined recipient on a post-it; a future customer redeems it for the treat) and the “Socialist Sliding Scale Soup” (it costs what you could pay). Clearly a cool spot run by cool people. But then I tasted the soup and I don’t remember what it was, only that it was one of the best soups I’ve ever had. And then I learned that savory stuff isn’t even Lagusta’s main thing. It’s her chocolates, which are fun and weird and delicious and also vegan.

Lagusta Yearwood opened Commissary! in 2011 and then Confectionery! in the East Village in 2016 (with her friend/vegan baker Maresa) and then closed Commissary! in 2022 to open the chocolate shop Lagusta's Luscious Café! in a smaller cheaper spot that would be more sustainable for her staff. Meanwhile, she published her cookbook “Sweet + Salty,” which is technically about vegan chocolates and candy but actually about life, thoughtful ingredient sourcing, and how to run a small business when you disagree with most of the conditions of modern capitalism. She does the best she can, and through the cookbook and all of her work, asks you to as well.

Not so surprisingly, Lagusta comes from an animal rights activism background. “Afterward,” she writes, “you need to do something soft with your life that’s still in line with your values, so as not to implode.” I respect her so much, so it was an honor to speak with her about tempeh, work, and finding balance.

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I feel like just having things that keep me alive that I know I can do quickly is so important. It's taken me many years to come around to that way of thinking because I'm always like, Every meal I make I want to be the best meal ever, but then I procrastinate making food because it's too much work. So I'm trying to get in the headspace that it doesn't have to be the most amazing thing. You're just eating.

It’s also taken me literal decades to learn that for my body, I need more protein than I've been giving it. When you eat more protein, you feel better. I eat a lot of beans and seitan, but seitan is a lot to digest. So tempeh is my jam.

I feel like the kind of tempeh really matters. I found out from Brooks from Superiority Burger, who knows everything, about this BOStempeh. It’s really amazing. The mass market tempeh is never going to be as good — maybe because it’s not pasteurized? I don’t know. Way back in the day I used to make chickpea tempeh and sell it in the chocolate shop because I’d just make random things to sell because, Why not? But we had this guy Kevin who would come in and buy the whole batch every time. Eventually I was like, Okay I’m just Kevin’s tempeh maker, we can’t do this. I feel like there's this thing with small businesses where the more you sell, the less profit you make. So you can only make it if you don't sell a lot. Which is a weird paradox about capitalism, that maybe shows that I'm not practicing capitalism very well.

Anyway. I keep this BOStempeh in the freezer, and then I put it in the steamer for 20 minutes. At the same time, I cut up an onion and caramelize it in olive oil, then crumble up the tempeh and brown them together. Then you have this onion tempeh thing that you can add to whatever. You can add greens to it, you could have it with potatoes or rice, you could add different spices. Sometimes I add paprika to give a nice toastiness. It's like old school hippie food but I'm realizing there's a reason people ate that food. It makes you feel very good.

When I first opened the chocolate shop, my friend Maresa was working there and starting her bakery business. We were so bad at eating. We had this thing we called “Berlinner,” which was breakfast-lunch-dinner, like your one meal of the day. We were always hangry. I would advise to not be that way. But I think we're both a lot more balanced now.

Kate: How has it been to try to have more balance?

Like in terms of food or life?

Kate: I mean, I feel like food is kind of a symptom of life.

Yeah, I mean it feels really good. I feel like everyone who's been in the professional food world has to detox from that world, especially if you've worked in restaurants. It’s a path that a lot of cooks take, where first you’re like, I want to be a line cook, and you have all these dreams (although it was always too male-dominated — I remember Kitchen Confidential came out when I was in culinary school and it was such a big thing and I was just like, Fuck that). But even though I worked for myself, I was still like, I’m going so hard, I worked 15 hours today. So I’m trying to come back from that. Eat more balanced food, live a more balanced life. Everything doesn’t have to be wild.

Kate: Is there anything that you say to yourself or that helps remind you to come back to this more balanced way of living?

I live with two kids now, which is really great, but there’s this problem called dinner. I love sitting down and chatting about our days, I feel like it's a great ritual. But in my years of cooking, I didn't observe traditional meals, and it used to be that I’d just do whatever to keep the business going. And now I have to be home for dinner. So I have these workaholic tendencies, but this has been a good evolution for me. Like, How do you nourish yourself so that you can show up for the people in your life? Why don’t I treat myself like I treat my employees? I don't ask people to work overtime. I don't ask people to think about work when they're not at work. So I’m trying to treat myself in that same way. I'm getting there. If we're trying to dismantle these oppressive systems, we can't do it in the exact same ways. I spent many years thinking that if I just worked hard enough I could solve capitalism, which is obviously a problematic thought.

Kate: Do you think you would have been able to build the shop and your businesses without working like that?

I'm actually having to answer this in my life right now as we build our little cannabis brand [Softer Power Sweets]. We're two Gen X/Millennials, one millennial, and one Gen Z person and our ideas about how we should run the business are often clashing. [My husband Mike’s] and my view is that we should go super hard and that that's the only way to succeed, and our other two founders are constantly challenging that and reminding us that we're trying to build a more sustainable business. Because we all have so much care and respect for each other we're constantly hashing (weed pun!) it out. I continually tell myself intellectually that I want the business to be sustainable for us and that it's not worth doing if it's not, but everything in me also says we need to be pushing harder. So I clearly have no answer to this question and am still trying to figure it out!

But unfortunately I don't think that a small business without start-up capital can succeed without crushingly hard work. Our cannabis spinoff has a bit more financial support than Lagusta's Luscious did when we started up and we have so much [collective wisdom about running businesses]. That makes a huge difference and is why we're not all working the crazy hours that I secretly (also not secretly) think we should be.

If anything, I think it's gotten harder to run a small business without family support or other kinds of emotional/community/financial support because everything is so much more expensive and the barriers to entry are higher than they were when I started. Maybe? I really hope I'm wrong! I want desperately to believe in a community-oriented business that can succeed without profit as its first goal — with a goal of an ethical supply chain, paying workers well, humane working conditions, etc. but the amount of capital it takes to start a system like that is so prohibitive.

Lagusta’s Tempeh

(Interpreted by me, based on her description)

Ingredients

• 1 package BOStempeh or any other fresh/frozen tempeh

• 1 onion

• Plenty of olive oil

• Optional flavorings: Garlic, paprika

Method
If the tempeh is frozen, put it in a steamer for about 20 minutes to defrost. Meanwhile, dice an onion and heat a good amount of olive oil in a pan. Begin to caramelize the onion, then crumble the tempeh and add it to the pan. Cook together until the onion is deep brown and the tempeh is crispy.

Serve with rice or potatoes or greens or a good tomato or use it in a recipe the way you would ground beef.

What I’m Cooking

(Aside from that tempeh as soon as I get more order in)