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.