Homemade Seitan "Wrap" from a Fairly OLD Tofu Mom

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I must be getting old.
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I know this because my ears are ringing and I am unreasonably exhausted. I blame it on late-night partying. Last night I attended the Jeremy Camp and Mercy Me "Rock and Worship Road Show Tour" with five of my girlfriends. Wild women, aren't we?
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Perfect seats, 12 rows from the stage, what an experience!!! Yes, it was very loud. (See? I'm old!) But it was SO FUN!!! Completely awesome and amazing. If you're into Christian Music, or these particular artists, and this tour comes anywhere near your hometown, by all means GO!! GO!! And it's ONLY 10$ dollars!! One of the most meaningful and incredible evenings I have had in ages!!!

And even better? We started with an all vegan dinner at Seattle's lovely Bamboo Garden restaurant.

But back to feeling old - and the concert. Well, said concert ended after 11:PM and we ended up home after midnight - I was so wound up it took a long time after that to actually SLEEP!!

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Here's what I found waiting for me in MY bed! Once I made room for myself to actually sleep in my bed, I crashed like a dead person.

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I'm sure I used to stay up this late all the time with minimal effects on my energy level. But today, let me tell you, I FEEL OLD!! My butt is d-r-a-g-g-i-n-g...

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Which brings me to lunch today - since I was completely out of ideas (or ambition) and apparently my children were dying of starvation because you KNOW I never feed them, I pulled a package of homemade seitan out of the freezer, thawed in the evil microwave and grilled it for some quick, easy "wraps".

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If you make your own seitan, by all means freeze some of it for later. It defrosts easily and works perfectly in sandwiches, soups, stir-fry and any other quick meals you want to throw together. SO CHEAP too!!
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Now, I am not fond of the word "wrap" so I'm not sure why I'm using it. I guess because it more accurately describes this sandwich than calling it a burrito. It's just a bunch of good stuff in a flour tortilla, call it what you want.

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No recipe for the wrap itself, it's just homemade seitan using the Quick Seitan Cutlets recipe (to which I added sage and thyme - hence the sloghtly green color) from Vegan Dad's blog. I grilled the seitan to fabulousness in the panini press, cut into strips, wrapped in a flour tortilla with chipotle BBQ sauce, my own slightly amazing vegan ranch and baby greens.

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DEEEELISH!!! Enjoy and have a great weekend. I'm back to Seattle again tomorrow for VegFest. My middle Sprout Daughter is going with me and ....(*gasp*) bringing a BOY WITH HER! Details later.

VeganMoFo I Hate Thee!

OK, I really don't, but the title caught your attention, right?

For the uninformed, "VeganMoFo" is a month-long attempt by vegan bloggers everywhere to post something about vegan food, every day. That's a LOT of blogging. And a lot of food. REALLY good vegan food.

VEGAN-MOnth-of-FOod... get it?

You can read about it on the PPK forums, here.

Now, I am perfectly OK with VeganMoFo, in fact I embrace it wholeheartedly. But it doesn't like me, or my blog for some reason...

To start with, last year the cute little "VeganMoFo" banner caused some huge script-java-something-something error on my blog and it crashed. I removed the banner and all was fine. Add it, in a different version... and my blog refused to function properly for yet more reasons. So after several more attempts to unify myself with other "VeganMoFo" bloggers, I skipped the whole banner idea all together.

This year, October 1st dawns bright and clear and I again attempt the to add this little bit of brown font to my blog. No dice. I get gimongous "ERROR" messages whenever I try to log in. The nice people at Blogger help me. I remove the bad VeganMoFo. And several posts disappear into thin cyberspace air, never to be found again...

SOooooooo... that said. I really AM attempting to participate in the whole "post as much as you can all month" concept, I am just not going to do so with a cute little banner.

With that said, I'm finally posting my vegan seitan sausages, the same recipe that everyone else made and posted ten years ago. I've been using this recipe from "Every Day Dish" but there are a zillion variations out there.

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They turn out really nice, though I admit I just can't leave a recipe exactly "as is".

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I usually punch up the spices and garlic a WHOLE LOT and use 1/4 cup tapioca flour for 1/4 cup of the vital wheat gluten flour because I like the more tender texture.
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We've been enjoying these grilled, fried with onions and potatoes, sliced in ratatouille, and topping pizza. LOVELY and actually much quicker to make than you'd think. Do try them if you're the one person on the planet who hasn't.

And yes, for you whiners, I'll be back with more original "Straight-From-Tofu-Mom's-Kitchen" recipes in a day or so.

"War Cake" and Chinese Seitan with Walnuts

Lucky you (or maybe not) ...two (totally unrelated) recipes today.

These are stand-bys that I've had in my repertoire for years. I know there's at least a million versions of them all over Recipe-land, but for your viewing pleasure, here are the magic combinations I've always used.

Evidently I hadn't made either in a while, but I got inspired for whatever reason and whipped them up for supper last night. They were gobbled in minutes by hungry munchkins.

(As you can see, the cake got "sampled" before I could even get a decent picture - so it looks like a mess, not the pretty cake that it started out to be!!)

So, dessert first: "War Cake" was actually developed during WWII when sugar, butter and eggs were rationed. It uses no butter or eggs . Thus it's also vegan.

Now, you tell some unsuspecting (and un-vegan-educated) omni that you have a vegan cake and they just may turn up their nose. Their loss.

But you give them this interesting little tidbit of history - call it a 'War Cake' (or 'Depression Cake' or one of it's many other names) and they'll be fascinated, trust me. It's super simple too, (no eggs to crack even) probably one of the first recipes my kids learned to make.

War Cake with Praline topping

• 3 cups flour
• 2 cups sugar
• 6 tablespoons cocoa
• 2 teaspoons baking soda
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 3/4 cup vegetable oil
• 2 tablespoon vinegar
• 2 teaspoon vanilla
• 2 cup cold water

Now the easy part:

Mix the dry ingredients.

Make a hole in the middle of the dry ingredients.

Mix wet ingredients together and pour into dry.

Stir until smooth.

Pour into greased pan.

Bake in 9 X 12 or two round pans at 350 degrees for 30 minutes.

When cool, frost it as desired.

We've always used a "German Chocolate Cake" nuts-and-coconut-type topping... I used to sneak into the pantry and pick off the nuts when I was little, they were sooooo yummy!

Topping

• 1/2 cup soymilk
• 1/2 cup sugar or rice syrup
• 1 Tb. egg replacer powder (mixed with soymilk)
• 1/4 cup Earth Balance
• 1/2 teaspoon vanilla
• 2/3 cup flaked coconut
• 1/2 cup coarsely chopped hazelnuts

In a medium saucepan, whisk the egg replacer powder and soymilk together.
Stir in sweetener and vanilla, and add the Earth Balance.
Cook over medium heat until the butter melts and the mixture thickens, stirring constantly with a wooden spoon, about 8-12 minutes.
Remove from heat, add coconut and nuts, and beat with the wooden spoon until frosting is of spreading consistency.

Do not taste until it has cooled a bit, as it gets VERY hot.
Spread on the top of the chocolate cake. It'll be runny and soak in a bit but this keeps the cake moist too.
Serve warm or cool.

Chinese Walnut Seitan

• 1 cup coarsely broken walnuts* (I use halves, it's prettier)
• 1 Tbsp. peanut oil
• 2 cups bite-size seitan chunks , your favorite recipe or store-bought
• 1/2 tsp. salt
• 1 cup onion slices
• 1 1/2 cups bias-cut celery slices
• 1 1/4 cups vegetarian chicken broth
• 1 tsp. sugar
• 1 tbsp. cornstarch
• 1/4 cup soy sauce
• 2 tbsp. cooking sherry/red wine or apple juice
• 1 (2/3 cup) bamboo shoots, drained
• 1 can water chestnuts, drained and sliced

In skillet, toast walnuts in hot oil, stirring constantly.

Remove nuts to paper towels.
Put Seitan, onion, celery, and 1/2 cup of the chicken broth in skillet.

Add salt only if you think it needs it.

Cook uncovered 5 minutes or till slightly tender.
Combine sugar, cornstarch, soy sauce, and cooking sherry; add remaining broth.

Pour over vegetables in skillet.

Cook till sauce thickens.
Add bamboo shoots, water chestnuts, and walnuts.

Heat through. Serve over your favorite veggies and rice.

In the picture, I layered rice, then just a generic package of frozen, cooked vegetables, then the Walnut Seitan on top (mainly 'cause I didn't want to use a bunch of serving dishes - I'm lazy, I admit it).

*You can use cashews or pecans if your family isn't a fan of walnuts. Mine actually prefer cashews but I happened to have walnuts tonight.

Asian Market Finds

We had to go into the city for a few errands this weekend, so we stopped by one of our favorite places; the Asian Market. To celebrate Cinco de Mayo. (Kidding! That was my kids' comment...) Anyway, I love the place because I always find all sorts of inexpensive, yummy - and vegan - goodies.

Just thought I'd post some pictures of our favorites...

Here's my daughter's first choice: Vegetable Dumplings (or steamed buns) filled with mushrooms, cabbage, bok choy, leeks and TVP - just steam and serve... simple, low-fat and filled with veggies my kids will actually eat - always good in my book!

Next up: Look at these boxes!

They are Japanese, marketed just for tofu storage, and they were 50 cents each! It's a 3-pc. set consisting of box, lid and mesh insert to hold the tofu. They fit my bricks of fresh tofu nicely (which I also get at the market, in bulk). I'd always had a problem with decent storage for bulk tofu though; ziploc bags were drippy and a pain, and I hadn't found any plastic containers that were a good fit - but these are perfect - and reuseable! The insert helps you pick up the tofu up out of the water without fishing around breaking the tofu and making a mess with water draining all over the place. Yes, I have these problems sometimes, you probably don't. Anyway, as you can see, I immediately put them to good use. (I know, I get WAY too excited over simple things...)

Korean sesame candy - usually this stuff comes in a big bag; dry, crunchy and individually wrapped, but this stuff's made fresh! Chewy, nutty candy made primarily with peanuts and white or black sesame seeds, it tastes a lot like very nutty peanut brittle. Oh my gosh, I could eat this stuff long after it was good for me. (though sesame seeds are a great source of calcium and protein, so I figure that's a great excuse!!).

Canned mock meats and coconut milk. The mock meats seem weird in a can, I know, but they're surprisingly very good! Read the labels of course but these are just chunks of seitan in a broth - great in stir-fry or curry.

Then there's this: "Seattle Ramen". You gotta LOVE it!!

It's the store's own brand of "Top Ramen" noodle soup (which is just the model health food, I realize), but the 'Hot and Spicy' variety here happened to be vegan, so we couldn't resist picking up a few packages...

Bryanna's "Beefy Seitan" = Chicken-Fried Steak

Friday Night, what to make for dinner... I always debate this on the drive home from work.
It's the one night of the week my Sprouts and I are all home at dinner time - together! No basketball or choir practice, no snowboarding, no youth group, no tutoring, no working late. It's the one night I know we'll actually sit down at the table, so I like it to be, at least a little bit special...

So I decided to use the seitan I'd made from Bryanna Clark Grogan's "Beefy Seitan" Recipe a couple weeks ago, (and frozen it for future use*).

*(I'm weird about seitan that way, once I've gone to all the work to make it, I'm usually tired of looking at the stuff and not interested in eating it.)

I had been thinking about making a Brocolli-Beef stir-fry thingy, but the Sprouts had other ideas: baked potatoes and "chik" nuggets" were their request. So, no big deal, stir-fry is just as good another day and I'm usually willing to let them make menu suggestions.
Alas, no nuggets to be found in the freezer, and the seitan was already defrosted, so I decided to try my hand at turning 'beefy' seitan into good ol' American 'chicken-fried' steak.

(Not being a meat eater, I had never understood why beef was called "chicken" anything... made no sense. But I guess it's the breading, pan frying and gravy that make it similar to fried chicken? I don't know. Doesn't matter really, this may not be anything close but that's what it makes me think of... Heck, call it whatever you want, I figure anything fried and covered in gravy should be called heaven on a plate :)

"Chicken-Fried-Style" Beefy Seitan Nuggets

• 1/2 recipe "Beefy Seitan", already cooked, cooled and cut into nugget-size pieces, about 24 pcs. or so (my "steaks" always turn out pretty big so I cut them apart into 3 or 4 pieces each)
• 1/4 cup soymilk
• 2 Tb. vegenaise (or blended silken tofu)
• 1/2 cup fine, dry bread crumbs
• 1/4 cup flour
• 3 Tb. nutritional yeast
• 2 Tb. cornstarch
• 1/4 tsp. each: sage, salt, onion powder, black pepper

Cut seitan into small pieces. Pat dry. Whisk soymilk and vegenaise (or blended silken tofu) together. Set aside. Mix dry ingredients in another bowl.

Heat 1/2 inch oil in skillet. (I like coconut oil here, or peanut oil is good too). Dip seitan in soymilk mixture and then roll in crumbs. Place carefully in hot skillet and fry on medium heat until golden and crunchy - 3 - 4 minutes. Turn carefully and fry other side. Remove to paper towel to drain, keep warm in oven if doing two batches. Continue until all "nuggets" are done.

Here's the gravy I did tonight. Maybe not my favorite recipe, but I'll post it, just the same 'cause it's quick and easy. This was on a card they hand out at the co-op near the bulk bins, so I can't really give anyone credit.

Un-Chik Gravy

• 2 tablespoons soy margarine
• 1/2 cup flour
• 1/2 cup nutritional yeast
• 1 teaspoon poultry seasoning or sage
• 1 teaspoon onion powder
• dash salt, to taste
• dash of pepper
• 2 cups vegetarian 'chicken' broth
• OR: 1 vegetarian bouillon cube dissolved in 2 cups boiling water
• OR: 1 cup broth and 1 cup soymilk for a creamy gravy.

Melt the soy margarine in a small saucepan over medium heat. Add the flour, and let it bubble a moment. Add nutritional yeast, and seasonings, stirring quickly with a whisk.
Add the broth, (and/or soymilk if you want it creamy) stirring until blended. Continue cooking and stirring for 5 minutes, or until thick, adjust seasonings to your taste.