The best seitan

I've had this recipe for seitan from the Vegan Epicurean clipped for ages, but only got around to trying it recently. It's brilliant! I've been making seitan for more than a decade, so I thought I'd tried every method around, but this one surprised me with its unusual texture: it's soft and juicy, and definitely not brainy.

What's unusual about this recipe is that you pan fry the dough before cooking it in liquid (in the pressure cooker).

I halve the recipe (142g vital wheat gluten), skip the onion flakes, nutritional yeast and marmite, and add some mushroom seasoning to the dry mix. For the cooking liquid, I use vegetable stock with some soy sauce. I pressure cook the cutlets for 25 minutes.

After pan-frying:

After pressure-cooking, the cutlets increase a lot in size. They are quite soft. I like to cut them into pieces and brown before serving.

Corn on the cob

I got over my Western-Mass.-induced corn snobbery and bought a couple of ears at the market this week. I decided to go for the classic corn on the cob, and then I felt the need to go all southern for the rest of the meal: seitan ribz; kale cooked collards style, with smoked coconut flakes and magic shroom dust; broccoli, not really fitting into the theme; and biscuits. I based the BBQ sauce on the apricot one in Veganomicon, but used dried apricots and a few random smoked prunes in place of the fresh apricots, used less of the sugary ingredients, and added some vinegar.

Smoking

I got a stovetop smoker for my birthday. Since then we've been eating lots of smoked things. Probably my favourite things so far have been smoked tofu and tempeh. Here's the smoker packed full of veggie protein (marinated pressed tofu, tempeh, and two homemade seitan sausages).

For the tofu, I press it overnight and then marinate it for a day in soy sauce with a bit of maple syrup and sesame oil. Once it has been smoked for 30 minutes, it's ready to be sliced thinly for sandwiches. The tempeh just goes in plain -- once smoked, it's ready to be cooked however you like. I like to slice it thinly and pan fry, adding flavourings (soy sauce plus whatever other things) at the end for a glaze.

Other things I've smoked so far: cherry tomatoes (10 minutes), garlic, potatoes (45 minutes from raw to cooked -- too long; better to parcook them before smoking), young coconut, coconut flakes (20 minutes), lemon. The young coconut was a bit odd -- I ended up pureeing it and making a smoky ice cream which was pretty good. The coconut flakes were great as a bacon-y element in a salad. The smoked lemon I didn't know quite what to do with, so it is sitting in the freezer waiting for inspiration to strike.

What does a vegetarian do with a meat grinder?

I love my stand mixer. Recently in an op shop I spotted an attachment for it: a meat grinder. Although they're not that rare (you do see attachments on eBay -- they can be pricey) I was so surprised to find it that I bought it right away without thinking about what I would use it for.

Quite some internet research later, I read that you can grind chickpeas for falafel with a meat grinder. And so I did. The falafel worked out really well. I convinced myself that this was because of the excellent texture, but it may well have been because the previous few times I've made falafel I have wimped out and baked them in the oven, and this time I (shallow-)fried them. Another vote in favour of the meat grinder was that it was really fun to throw the chickpeas, parsley and garlic into the hopper and have them come out homogeneous. (Okay, that happens when you use the food processor too, but I swear this was more fun.)

Emboldened, I ground some seitan, and some cauliflower, and made a version of larb with cauliflower 'rice' from Stone Soup. This was delicious! We had a green mango salad alongside (sort of along these lines).

Overall, I'm happy to have the meat grinder. It's a bit of a hassle to clean, but not that much worse than a food processor. I like that the stuff you grind comes out a uniform size. I also like that you can grind a large amount. I think the next thing I'm going to try is bigoli.

Tacos

We had these tacos three times this week. I am not one to repeat recipes, usually, so this is saying something.

In case I forget, this is how you make amazing tacos:

1. Steamed white seitan from Viva Vegan!, baked in the marinade suggested in the recipe for Chipotle, Seitan and Potato Tacos from the same book
2. Homemade corn tortillas
3. Avocado
4. Thinly shredded cabbage with a simple viniagrette
5. Essential Roasted Tomatillo-Chipotle Salsa from Rick Bayless' Mexican Kitchen
(6. Optional: sauteed mushrooms and red capsicum)

The salsa really made this exceptional. It's quite simple (just rehydrated chipotles, roasted garlic and tomatillos) but so smoky, hot and satisfying. I wanted to lick my plate to get every last drop of it when I was done with my tacos.