How To Make Some Tender Seitan

Braised seitan with peas and mashed cauliflower

Making seitan can be a long and arduous process. I remember making this stuff from complete scratch with whole wheat flour and water. That's it. That was a four hour process at least. So my love affair with "wheat meat" did not make it to adulthood with that method. But thank those lovely food scientists and my mother's wonderful cooking for this recipe. It still takes about 2 hours but I think it's worth it and one batch goes a long way.

Mind you this is what is considered the "quick method" (complete screw face at this being the quick method) so if you want to bake it, well, that's another post for another time. Use this quick method for chicken-fried seitan or quick stir-fries. I used it for a (sort of) braised dish pictured above.

The thing that makes this tender? Soy flour. I find that if I use equal parts soy flour and gluten flour it becomes really tender and a lot less chewy than using the recipe on the back of the box. If you want it a little more tough, add more gluten flour but never exceed a 2:1 gluten flour:soy flour ratio or it'll be like chewing leather. Ew. Anyway, enjoy!

Ingredients:
1/2 cup vital wheat gluten
1/2 soy flour
about 1/4 cup warm water
various seasonings
salt and pepper
one really big pot

Directions
Put a large pot of water on high heat. Heavily season your water with your own mix of seasonings. I use the following:
salt
pepper
paprika
liquid smoke, hickory flavor
minced onions
4 cloves of garlic
poultry seasoning
 
Mix the flours in a bowl. Slowly pour the warm water in the flour mixture.

Knead mixture for about 3-4 minutes. After kneading your ball should be firm and should not fall apart.

After much kneading, this is what your gluten should look like.

For the next part you can do one of two things:

Roll out the dough with a rolling pin and cut the mixture in equal parts.

OR
Pull pieces of the gluten from the ball and stretch it out with your hands until it forms rounds.

I use the second method.

This is what your pieces look like before you put them in the water.

Place the gluten in the pot of water (that should be boiling about now. If not it's hot enough to place the pieces in there).

Cook the gluten for at least one hour.

Drain and cool and prepare as you want.

I hope my instructions were clear enough. Tell me what you make with it!

And this is what your pieces will look like after cooking.

Here's a picture of some veggies. It was just too much brown in this post.

Curried Carrot Soup

It's cold outside. Not "brr. I can't feel my toes" cold but "hmm...soup would be nice on this brisk autumn day" cold. And that's exactly what I did. I made some soup.

I've always liked making soup. My mother tells me my orange lentil soup is really good (another day).  And I'm currently watching my figure ferociously so I wanted to make a soup that was both warming and guilt-free. I paired this soup with a Tofurky panini on whole wheat bread with honey mustard and white cheddar. Twas filling and really good. I hope you like it.

Curried Carrot Soup

Ingredients
-4 medium carrots
-1 white potato
-1/2 small white onion
-frozen peas (optional)
-3 cloves of garlic
-1 tbsp. vegetable oil
-Curry powder (really pile it on)
-3 cups of vegetable stock (or 1 veg. bouillon cube and 3 cups of water)
Small amounts of the following:
-Ground Cumin
-Ground Coriander
-Celery Seed
-salt and pepper to taste
-A dollop of Daisy plain yogurt to serve (optional)


Directions
Peel and chop onions, garlic, potato, and carrots. Set aside.

Heat a pan with oil on medium high heat. Saute veggies for 10 minutes. Add vegetable stock and reduce heat to medium low.

Add all spices to mixture. Cover and cook for 15 minutes.

Ladle majority of vegetable mixture into a blender and blend until smooth. If you like all of your soup smooth, ladle the entire mixture in the blender and blend until smooth. Pour blended mixture back in pan and turn neat to low. Reduce heat to low.

Add peas and cook for another 2-3 minutes. Turn off heat and serve with a sandwich of your choice or crusty bread.

Lime and Coconut White Chocolate Bark

I've never really good at baking. I'm one of those people that likes to throw things in a pot and hope for the best. For regular cooking that's perfect. That's typically where I get my best ideas. For baking it leaves me with tons of sunken dense cakes and salty cookies. The only thing I can bake well without measuring is cornbread. And that's only because you really can't go wrong with cornbread. Just put enough baking powder in it to rise and there you go.

I went on a tangent.


So I don't bake. But I do like sweets so I decided to try some bark which is ridiculously easy to make and such a great base to really get creative. I wanted something that reminded me of the tropics (because I really need a vacation from this life of mine right about now). Consider this my ode to the summer past and sorely missed on this cool October Saturday.

Lime and Coconut White Chocolate Bark

Ingredients
-1/2 bag of white chocolate chips
-Unsweetened coconut flakes
-Sliced Almonds
-1 lime juiced
-Zest from one lime


Directions
Melt the white chocolate chips in a double boiler (or a bowl over a pot of boiling water) until completely melted.

Take off of the heat and stir in the lime juice and lemon zest until completely mixed. Your mixture might look a little pasty and no longer smooth and creamy. I'm sure it has something to do with the lime juice mixing with the milk solids and cocoa butter. But it'll be fine.

After, mix in the almonds and coconut.

Pour the mixture into a shallow pan covered with wax or parchment paper. Leave in refrigerator for at least one hour before cutting and serving.

Get creative with your mixtures. Try some pumpkin or chai-spiced bark for a more fall flavor. Use milk or dark chocolate instead of white. I'll put up more bark combos in the next week since it is so easy to make and really great to have on hand. But please don't wait on me to do some experimenting of your own!

I've been gone for a minute.

If you've been wondering what's been keeping me from posting I'll tell you. Life has been keeping me from posting. Not to say that this somehow isn't a part of my life. I've just been so distracted with everything that doesn't seem to quite be going right that I haven't given this blog as much thought as I should. But I'm back now. I'll also try to blog once a week. So yeah. Sorry for the absence if you've been reading.

Peach BBQ Seitan Sandwiches

   I grew up making seitan (we called it "kalebone" which is English phonetics for the Hebrew word protein) and let me tell you making this stuff is a long and arduous process. So any chance I get, I go out and buy ready-made seitan to avoid wasting 3 hours of my life preparing the stuff some scratch. Whole Foods has these packages of plain seitan in their stores but I'm more a fan of the Chinese brands because they come already seasoned and processed in different ways to imitate different types of meat like pork, chicken, and my personal favorite duck. The seitan at Whole Foods may be easier to find though.

If you can find this stuff, I'm telling you it will change your life.

   What makes this stuff so great is its versatility. Like tofu, it can take on any flavor; unlike tofu though, I've found that it is even more palatable to non-vegetarians. They just seem to like the texture better I guess.

Peach BBQ Seitan Sandwiches

Ingredients

10 ounces of seitan
Hamburger buns or kaiser rolls
Vegetable oil

For the BBQ Sauce:
2 peaches, skinned and diced
1 small onion, roughly chopped
about 1 tbsp. of garlic powder
about 1 cup of ketchup
about 2 tsp. of the following:
Dijon mustard
Cider vinegar
Vegan Worcestershire sauce
Blackstrap molasses (or one tsp. of pomegranate molasses. I used pomegranate molasses. You need to use less of it because it is much tangier than the blackstrap version because of the pomegranate juice)
A few splashes of Liquid Smoke

Black pepper

If you can't find vegan Worcestershire sauce, soy sauce would work just fine for this recipe.

 

For the Cabbage Slaw:
1/4 of a head of Savoy or Napa cabbage
1/2 a small red onion
about 1 tsp of celery seed
Vegenaise or mayonnaise
1 tbsp. of Dijon mustard
a pinch of salt



Directions
Slice the red onion thinly for the cabbage slaw and set aside in a bowl of cold water. This takes some of the bite of the onion flavor which is essential since you will be eating these raw.

Foodie tip #9480: Putting onions in cold water also lowers the chance of crying while slicing into it. I always ice my onions first before getting into them because I'm such a baby.

Heat a pan and stir fry the chopped onions for the sauce until the onions just begin to caramelize. Add the rest of the ingredients and simmer on low for about 15 minutes or until the peaches are tender. Transfer the sauce into a blender and blend until smooth. Place BBQ sauce back in the pot and simmer on low for ten minutes.

While the sauce simmers, remove seitan from packaging and slice thinly. In a non-stick or cast iron skillet, brown the seitan. Once the sauce is finished, combine with the seitan and continue to cook on low for another 3-4 minutes (you may only want to use about half of the sauce since this recipe makes a sizable portion of BBQ sauce. But this sauce is so great, I'm sure you'll be able to use it in another dish). Set aside.

Thinly slice the cabbage and place in a bowl. Combine all of the other ingredients, including the red onion, in the bowl and mix together.

Toast your buns slightly and begin to make your sandwich. I suggest using more of the slaw than the seitan to have a balance of flavors on your sandwich.

The Rosemary Post

The thing about fresh herbs sometimes is that yeah you may have great plans to cook something with them but if you don't use those herbs quickly you could end up throwing 90 percent of it away (because I mean really. A little goes a long way in this case).

Case in point: I bought a ton of rosemary for really cheap and was really excited to use it. But three days after I bought and it was still sitting in the fridge longing to be used. Even now I have four long stalks (sprigs? I'm bad on herb lingo) of the stuff in the freezer. But it will be used. This is my vow to you.

So, here are a couple of the things I made with rosemary. I hope you'll enjoy them both.

Black Pepper Tofu

There are probably as many versions of black pepper tofu as there are people who cook it so my version is just one of many. Unlike many versions I've seen though, I've added green veggies in mine. Can never miss an opportunity to get your green vegetables in your meals. This version I made with green beans but I have made this with broccoli and it tasted just as great. I'm sure even a more Asian choice (like bok choy?) would be great as well. 

Black Pepper Tofu

Ingredients:
1/2 Block of frozen extra firm tofu, thawed
about 3 tbsp. crushed black peppercorns (or coarse-ground black pepper)
cornstarch or all purpose flour
about 1/2 cup of soy sauce
about 1/4 cup of sugar
about 2 teaspoons of ground ginger
1/2 small onion chopped fine
2 cloves of garlic, minced
a splash of balsamic vinegar*
a splash of chili oil (purely optional)
green beans, rinsed and chopped in thirds
oil for frying

Freezing tofu changes the texture making it more spongy.

Directions:
Cover the bottom of a shallow pan with oil and place over medium high heat.
Combine the cornstarch and black pepper.
Cut the tofu in 1/2" cubes. Dredge the tofu in the cornstarch mixture and fry in the heated oil.
Do not crowd the pan with the tofu (but even I don't follow this rule in a rush so don't take it as gospel).
Cook the tofu until golden brown. Drain and set aside.
Combine the soy sauce, sugar, ground ginger, and balsamic vinegar in a bowl and mix thoroughly.
Heat a small amount of oil over high heat in a non-stick or cast iron skillet.
Combine the garlic and onions and fry in the pan. Cook for 2 minutes or until the onions just begin to caramelize.
Add green beans and cook for about 5 minutes.
Add the chili oil and cook for 30 more seconds
Add the soy sauce mixture. When the soy sauce mixture reduces a little (shouldn't take more than 2 minutes), turn off the heat.
Combine the cooled tofu and serve with rice.

*Foodie Trick #2930: If ever you over-salt your food, adding a little vinegar will trick your taste buds and your food will taste less salty (though your sodium content will still be high. Too much salt is still a bad thing). Because the sauce for this recipe is made majorly of soy sauce, I thought adding a splash of balsamic would add depth of flavor and take some of the saltiness of the soy sauce away as well. If you'd like, you could use less soy sauce and add water but then your sauce might be a little runny and thin. And runny sauce is just tragic.