Monday, March 29, 2010

curried seitan + cauliflower


When I was a kid, one of my favorite treats was miàn jīn, Chinese fried gluten. It is impossible to describe in a way that makes it sound appealing. Balls of wheat gluten that had been deep fried, and canned in some sort of mysterious and delicious oil. In terms of appearances, it was not a pretty thing. It also kept its shape fairly well, so when you peeled pieces out of the can with your chopsticks, they always retained its vaguely cylindrical, brainlike consistency, and is advertised as "mock meat". You're drooling right now, aren't you.

So, like with most things, once I moved away to college and away from the sometimes astonishingly ... antique contents of our pantry at home, I forgot about most of these things.

Until, a couple of years ago, Hillside Quickie happened. So the name of the restaurant is a bit of a misnomer, given that it is neither situated on a hillside, nor is the service quick, by any stretch of the imagination. What it does boast, however, is VEGAN SOUL FOOD.

Now, I've already gone over my various and complicated feelings about "-an" classifications of eating, so you can take my word for it when I say that this isn't just good food by vegan standards (if you are one of those skeptics that believes that meat + butter related substances are key for anything delicious). This food is good, period. If you are ever in the Seattle area, it is definitely worth a stop. This place affirms the hypothesis that everything can be made delicious through the process of deep frying.

Hillside Quickies can be wholly attributed to my discovery of seitan - namely, that it existed outside of the nebulous walls of my mother's pantry, and that other people eat it.

Since I've started cooking in earnest this year, my roommate has pioneered many successful attempts at making seitan through baking. As I was doing research for our weekly group vegan dinners, I finally thought that I would try my hand at it. And let me tell you, there is a lot of shit to sort through about seitan.

I encountered a few recipes that uttered dire warnings about boiling the seitan, others still who swore by it, tons of recipes that differed between cooking time, cooking method, amount of oil, type of oil, marination. You get the idea.

So, deciding that it was time to just pony up and start experimenting, I glommed together various recipes from around the internets and came up with this.


Curried Seitan + Cauliflower

INGREDIENTS:
  • 6-8 cups vegetable broth
  • 2 2/3 cup vital wheat gluten
  • 3 Tablespoons nutritional yeast
  • 1 Tablespoon curry powder
  • 1 teaspoon tumeric
  • 1 Tablespoon salt
  • 1/4 cup dry sherry
  • 2 Tablespoons soy sauce
  • 1 3/4 cup water
  • 1 stalk green onions, chopped
  • 1 head cauliflower, chopped
  • 2 cups rice milk
  • 1 Tablespoon flour
  • 1 Tablespoon curry powder
  • 1 tablespoons salt
  • 1 teaspoon cayenne pepper
  • 1 teaspoon garlic powder


DIRECTIONS:

1. Pour the broth into a large pot and bring to a boil. Reduce to a simmer.

2. Combine the vital wheat gluten, nutritional yeast, curry, and salt into a medium size bowl.

3. Combine the soy sauce, sherry, and water into another bowl.

4. Mix the wet ingredients into the dry ingredients with a spoon. Knead into dough a few times until all of the ingredients are incorporated. The water will react almost instantly with the vital wheat gluten to make a tough dough.

5. Tear pieces of dough off the larger dough ball with your hands and drop gently into the simmering broth. The pieces should be about an inch in diameter. Allow to cook for about 20 minutes, or until the seitan has expanded and risen to the top of the pot. Remove from heat and place in a shallow dish.

6. Mix half a cup of rice milk with the flour in a medium saucepan. Stir over low heat until the mixture has thickened.

7. Add the remaining rice milk and other sauce ingredients, and cook at medium heat for approximately 5 minutes, or until the sauce has thickened.

8. Pour the mixture over the seitan pieces and refridgerate overnight.

9. The next day, allow the seitan to sit at room temperature for about ten minutes before cooking.

10. Heat 2 tsp of oil over medium heat in a large saucepan. Spoon the seitan pieces into the pan, reserving the sauce, and cook for 3-4 minutes, until the seitan is slightly browned and firm.

11. Pour marinade sauce over the seitan, add the cauliflower, and cook for an additional 3-4 minutes.

12. Salt and pepper to taste, garnish with green onions, and serve over rice.



I was a little nervous about making this, in the way that I am nervous about attempting to make cheese. When food texture is so important, it generally is common sense to assume that it would be really easy to screw up. And though I cooked my seitan a tiny bit longer than I should have (I modified the above recipe accordingly), the seitan just was a little bit tougher than was my preference, but could very well be exactly up someone else's alley. But the point is, the whole thing did not explode into a seitany, satan-y ball of doom, and was quite forgiving of all of the humiliations that I put it through. Do be prepared for the alarming rate of dough expansion among cooking, and learn from my mistakes and test the seitan frequently to make sure that it is at the consistency and texture that you like.

Though I will admit: I am still a little bit freaked out by the insta-magic of wheat gluten. The final product was a very convincing meat-like texture, with good flavor. In the future, I'm going to try slicing and frying cutlets (instead of boiling pieces), so we'll see how that works out. Also, I am well aware that this is the second curried cauliflower recipe that I have posted. I'm working on diversifying, I promise.

It was quite an easy make-ahead sort of recipe, and the vegetables could certainly be flexible, depending on what is in season. Seitan keeps remarkably well in the freezer as well, so you could always portion the seitan in freezer bags, instead of just marinating overnight.

And while it is not quite as cheap an option as tofu or beans, it is quite a treat, and - it turns out - easy to make.

Also, if anyone has any killer seitan recipes, then do let me know! Sorry for not having pictures of the final product (the first picture was the seitan, post-marinade) - but it always gets eaten up so fast...

Wednesday, March 10, 2010

Vegan Mexican Chocolate Cake



It's been a big week. A big week involving acceptance letters in the mail! And finally, finally, the previously distant future melding with my immediate present.

So, with the prospect of moving to New York on the brain, I decided that celebration was in order. Specifically, celebration in the form of cake.


Vegan Mexican Chocolate Cake
[copied verbatim from Foods For Long Life]

INGREDIENTS

  • 1 1/2 cups flour
  • 1/2 cup white sugar
  • 1/4 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
  • 1 teaspoon baking soda
  • 1/2 teaspoon cayenne pepper
  • 2 teaspoons cinnamon
  • 1 cup cold water
  • 1 tablespoon vanilla
  • 1 tablespoon balsamic vinegar
  • 1/4 cup extra virgin olive oil
  • 1 to 2 tablespoons powdered sugar

INSTRUCTIONS

  1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.
  2. Cut a piece of foil to fit the bottom of an 8 inch pie plate, and place in the bottom of the pan. Grease the sides of the pan with olive oil.
  3. Combine dry ingredients in a large bowl.
  4. Stir in the water, vanilla, vinegar and oil until combined.
  5. Pour mixture into the cake pan, and bake for 25 to 30 minutes until a toothpick comes out clean.
  6. Cool in the pan, then turn the cake pan over and gently peel off the foil from the bottom of the cake.
  7. Turn the cake back over so it is cooling on the rack with the top facing up and cool another 15 minutes.
  8. Dust cake with powdered sugar.


Monday, March 1, 2010

clam pesto pizza


To say that I'm a fan of seafood would be a major understatement. By and large, I'm fairly successful in eating very little red and white meat, but seafood is one thing that I know that I could never give up completely.

I could rattle off a Forrest Gump-esque list that soliloquizes all the ways and manners in which I love all kinds of seafood - not just shrimp - but for everyone sanity (and limited attention span), I won't. I'll just say that we have crabs for Thanksgiving in lieu of a turkey, and leave it at that.

So.

Within the last couple of years, I've been lucky eough to have a monetary and gastronomic lifesaver nearby: Trader Joe's.

Specifically, two ingredients: the pizza dough, and the basil.

Let's break this down for a minute.

The pizza dough, which comes infused with all of the herby/yeasty/premade (and therefore lazines enabling) goodness: is less than $2.

The basil: comes in one boatsized denomination, which is not so great when you picked it up to make basil mozzarella sandwiches, but is the perfect amount for making pesto. In fact, I am fairly sure that it is humanly impossible to actually go through an entire box of the stuff without resorting to the "quick!-make-pesto-before-it-all-goes-bad!" strategy. All told, it's not too expensive to make amazing simple pizzas for dirt-cheap, and deluxe slightly-more-complicated pizzas for not too much more.

This pizza falls into the second category. I actually made this a few weeks ago (obligatory referral to the bleating excuses that I have made in previous posts affirming that yes, I AM still cooking, but yes, I also similtaneously am too lazy to blog most of the things I make). I wasn't even going to post the recipe. But the next day, when I brought in my leftovers, I was met with a universal reaction of disgust.

CLAM pizza? I might as well have brought in roadkill sandwiched between two pieces of Wonderbread. I found myself constantly having to defend my (apparently) odd recipe choice. I didn't think it was that strange.

Really.

I'd had clam pizzas at lots of places, usually with some incarnation of white sauce. Granted, I knew that this was not exactly something that you could pick up at Little Caesar's, but I certainly didn't think the combination strange enough to warrant an involuntary gagging sound. It's just like the clam sauce that you would have over pasta, people! The same basic meat+sauce+carb combo is still intact, I promise! It's just a slightly different variant! Now would you please put away your torches and pitchforks?

Given the reaction, I figured I really had no other choice but to blog it, with the hope of alleviating prejudice for the poor overlooked clam pizzas of tomorrow.

Obviously, if you are not a clam fan to begin with, this recipe is not for you. But on the off chance that you are fond of an occasional plate of Spaghetti alle Vongole at your local Italian restaurant, I beg you to consider this:


Pesto Clam Pizza
(pesto recipe adapted from the amazing 101 recipes)


INGREDIENTS
  • 1 package of Trader Joe's refrigerated pizza dough (I like the herbed version, but the whole wheat is also quite good)
  • 1 large bunch of basil leaves
  • 1 head of garlic, separated into peeled cloves (from the above picture, you can tell I used two, but you all know my feelings on garlic at this point)
  • 1/2 cup grated parmesean cheese
  • 1 tsp lemon juice
  • 3 tablespoons of extra virgin olive oil
  • A few tablespoons water
  • 1 6.5-oz can of chopped clams
  • 3 tablespoons dry sherry
  • dash of white flour
  • salt and pepper, to taste
  • 1/4 cup mozzarella cheese (optional)


INSTRUCTIONS


1. Take pizza dough out of the fridge and let rest on the counter. Preheat oven to 400 degrees.

2. Mince a third of the garlic. Add 1/3 of the basil leaves and chop them into the minced garlic. Add the next third of garlic along with 1/3 of the parm cheese. Mince until integrated. Alternate chopping the remaining basil, cheese, and garlic into the mixture until the final overall consistency is a fine mince.

3. Drizzle in the lemon juice and olive oil, and stir. Add a few tablespoons of water as needed, in order to achieve a thick pizza-sauce consistency.

4. Open the can of clams and drain the clam juice into a medium-sized saucepan. Add the dry sherry and stir over low heat for 1-2 minutes. Stir in a dash of white flour to help the sauce thicken.

5. Turn the heat to medium-high, stirring occasionally, until the clam-wine sauce has thickened. Add in the reserved clams and stir until heated through. Remove from heat, salt and pepper to taste if needed.

6. Use olive oil to grease a baking sheet (or use a pizza stone if you are lucky enough to have one) and hand-stretch the pizza dough to an approximate 12" diameter. Bake in preheated oven for 5 minutes.

7. Spread the pesto mixture in a thin layer over the semi-baked crust, then spread the clam sauce mixture over that. Sprinkle mozzarella cheese over the top, if desired.

8. Put back in oven and bake according to the package until the crust has browed.



Convinced yet?