Miracle Grain

This stuff is awesome.

I'm going to make cheese-and sun dried tomato-filled fried quinoa patties with butter-herb sauce, Curry Spinach and Quinoa, and work on a quinoa-and-breadcrumb stuffing that can be baked in a casserole and served for Thanksgiving.

Maybe some No-bake Quinoa haystack cookies, with coconut and melted butterscotch chips and cornflakes, or with puffed rice cereal for Passover. Oh.

Is Quinoa Kosha for Pesach?!?!?!?!?

YES!

Adventures in Mock Meat: Part One, Epilogue

No. No, not at all. it had the right level of firmness, but the texture was nothing like. Maybe I bought the wrong stuff. Maybe I didn't knead it well enough, or long enough, or simmered it too low, to short a time. But I think we can call recipe one a failure, or at least this attempt.

And I'm off mock meat for a moment anyway, as I marvel over the fact that I actually bought and cooked squash. And ate it. And my Darling BF did too, and they were delicious 'breakfast' burritos, as he read aloud doggerel (catterel?) aloud from T.S. Eliot. And, of course, Full Metal Alchemist. Which remains absolutely awesome.

Adventures in Mock Meat: Part One, Addendum Two

So I simmered the seitan for well over an hour last night, and it seemed to firm up well, expand as indicated, etc. It was . . . slimy, though. I soaked it a bit on paper towels before placing the 'cutlets' on aluminum foil and freezing them, and they left a thick, floury sludge behind. I'm starting to worry if what I bought from the Bulk section was not vital wheat gluten but a high-gluten flour, which would still have that starchiness in it. Hm. But neither Safeway nor the Co-op seemed to have anything marked simply "Wheat Gluten", despite the guy on Youtube insisting it's common enough to be bought at Wal-mart, of all places.

If it is straight-up Gluten, I should try again, maybe frying it this time instead, or baking it. Anyway, the taste test happens tomorrow, I imagine, as we have swimming class this afternoon/early evening, and I know I won't want to cook anything as complex as a theoretical-seitan-based-developed-from-what's-in-the-house dish.

Adventures in Mock Meat: Part One Addendum

So the seitan is simmering away. The process of making it wasn't difficult, though I added a lot of extra gluten flour, maybe as much as 3/4 cup, just to be able to knead it without it sticking to my hands like crazy. The kneading was fun, though - a little easier than bread dough, maybe because of how little there was to knead.

So I used some Kosher pareve chicken-style bouillon powder, a bit of Italian Herb blend, and a tiny bit of cumin in the seitan itself, along with some chicken broth made of the cubey version of the same stuff, with one packet of light soy sauce. (n.b. I've decided never to buy soy sauce. Restaurants just throw it at you, and I can't think of a recipe where I need more than a few tablespoons at a time. Frugality!)

DBF is up and about, but just up enough to be playing Fable (one of my favorite video games to which to listen, because of the awful/awesome accents and fairy-tale tropes in it). So I continue with kitchen adventures. Making mashed potatoes for Vegetarian Bangers and Mash, using 'Kielbasa' and a Vegetarian Gravy recipe I found on allrecipes.

Adventures in Mock Meat: Part One

In researching that VegeUSA stuff, I've been led to believe that I may be able to make something comparable at home with stuff that cost me . . . let's see . . . maybe $3.

Apparently, seitan has been around for ages, and is meaty enough that some vegetarians think it's gross and won't eat it. Bingo! It even holds its shape well enough to be used in stews and things, provided you add it near the end. Can do! It soaks up flavors as well as tofu, and can be shaped however you like. Awesome.

So I have everything I need, though I'm using faux-meat boullion for the flavoring, rather than garlic and ginger, which is traditional, for Chinese cuisine anyway. I'm going to try two recipes, and see which suits my idea of what a meatlike stuff should be.

The first is from about.com, by Jolinda Hackett. It gets bonus points for pictures, and will be my first attempt at seitan-making.

The second is from the Vegetarian Resource Group, by Jill Nussinow.

Either way, I'm being vewwy, vewwy quiet, as poor, sick DBF is sleeping on the rocking loveseat my grandmother gave me, which made the long trek south. I have Django Reinhardt on the iPod, and intend to start making faux-chicken this instant, as soon as I wash the cat off my hands.

Incidentally, I'm pleasantly surprised that my allergies have been reasonably mellow, considering that I'm living with a cat who is definitely not short-hair. I only pop the antihistamines twice a day or so, less if I'm not in the apartment much. Hooray!

Hail Seitan!


(If you don't get this, check this out.)