I’m feeling a little self conscious. Two eggless eggy recipes in a row. Whoops! In my defense, I wasn’t thinking eggless anything when I put this week’s lineup together. I was more like, oh hey, easy midweek lunch fix on Wednesday, and then weekend brunch fix on Friday. Also, neither recipe actually contains eggs, so they’re really not all that similar. I’d never had any version of this dish until this one. Eggs with egg yolk sauce? No thank you! Tempeh with tofu sauce on the other hand, okay it doesn’t sound that exciting, but hear me out. The tempeh part of this recipe is bomb. I decided not to add a stand-in for the poached egg component because the temeph was so delicious and flavorful. It just seemed wrong. I debated using a few slabs of pan-fried tofu sprinkled with kala namak, and you can if you want, but it’s totally not necessary. My husband had to explain the taste of hollandaise sauce. Creamy and lemony and a little salty. I could swing that. He didn’t even realize the main ingredient was egg yolks. I went with silken tofu for a creamy base, a little bit of nutritional yeast for savory flavor, of course lemon, and just a little bit of vegan butter. I usually try to work around using commercial vegan butter or margarine, but I figured what they hey, this is brunch, so it’s probably a special meal. You can skip it if you’re totally opposed, but a couple of tablespoons of Earth Balance gave the sauce a nice buttery mouthfeel. So my vegan eggs benedict dining experience was a total success. I loved every sloppy bite of this meal.
