Slow-cooked red seitan

August 30, 2015

I've hit my seitan stride this year and it's high time I blogged my preferred recipe. It comes from Steen and Noyes' Vegan Sandwiches Save The Day, with only the most minor adaptations from me. Originally called 'moo-free seitan', it's clearly aimed at replacing red sandwich meats and has tomato paste, tamari and smoked paprika worked into the dough. Besides these reddening agents, there's also garlic, onion, nooch and liquid smoke to reinforce that savoury flavour.

I also like that this recipe makes use of my oft-neglected slow cooker. It's little trouble to rustle up the requisite ingredients, submerge a couple of dough loaves in broth, and allow them to slowly simmer over the course of 8 hours. Once done, that's one loaf for the fridge, one for the freezer, and a couple litres of stock as a bonus. 

I've found that the seitan slices brown and crisp up nicely in a frypan while remaining juicy (and even pink!) in the centre. They fare well as simple chops, but also hold up to stir-frying and gravy-smothering.

Slow-cooked red seitan
(slightly adapted from Celine Steen & Tamasin Noyes'
Vegan Sandwiches Save The Day)

seitan dough
2 cup gluten flour
3 tablespoons soy flour
1 tablespoon nutritional yeast flakes
2 teaspoons onion powder
1 teaspoon smoked paprika
1 teaspoon garlic powder
1/2 teaspoon black pepper
1 teaspoon 'beef' stock powder
3 tablespoons tomato paste
1/4 cup tamari
2 teaspoons liquid smoke
1 1/4 cups water

cooking broth
2 teaspoons 'beef' stock powder
1 tablespoon tomato paste
1 tablespoon tamari
4-8 cups water
4 cloves garlic, sliced
black pepper

In a medium sized bowl, stir together the gluten flour, soy flour, nooch, spices and stock powder.

Place the tomato paste in a small bowl. Whisk in the tamari and liquid smoke, and then 1 cup of the water. Pour all of this liquid into the bowl of dry ingredients and stir them together with a wooden spoon to form a dough. The aim is to make a dense, firm dough - add in as much of the extra 1/4 cup water you need to bring all the dry ingredients together. Knead the dough in the bowl for a few minutes, scrunching your fingers right in to stretch the gluten strands. Divide the dough into two little loaves and place them side by side in a slow cooker.

Prepare the cooking broth by whisking together the stock powder, tomato paste and tamari, then stirring in 1 cup water. Pour this mixture over the seitan loaves in the slow cooker. Continue pouring in more water until the seitan is just covered. Drop in the garlic slices and add a few grinds of pepper. 

Cook the seitan on low for 8 hours, using tongs to turn the loaves over at the 4 hour mark. Allow the seitan to cool a while in the broth before cooking with it or storing it. We refrigerate or freeze the seitan, and reserve the strained broth to use as stock (often freezing it too).

Mango basil wraps

December 28, 2013

I know that not everyone is comfortable with fruit in salads. It's one thing to slip some dried fruit into the rice or couscous and perhaps not too far a stretch to pair a fig or quince with some fancy cheese, but these practices can progress to introducing apples, citrus fruits, grapes, strawberries and even watermelon to the dinner table. Salad-wise, the syrupy sweet mango is surely the final frontier. 

I have crossed that frontier. I have mixed mango with avocado, cucumber, herbs, sprouts and coconut in a sub-tropical wrap published in Vegan Sandwiches Save The Day. And I'll do it again and again, for as long as I can access mangos and creamed coconut.

I picked up this little box of creamed coconut last year for a couple of dollars at an Indian grocery, with little idea of what to do with it. It's a thick, fatty paste that I gather is generally used to make curries, soups and South-east Asian desserts creamier; Steen and Noyes repurpose it for condiments and vegan cheese in their sandwich book. In this wrap they set the savoury tone by adding onion, garlic, chilli and ginger to their creamy coconut spread.

There's lot of the spread left after all the wrapping's done. It sets to a firm, crumbly consistency in the fridge but softens down to something spreadable when it makes contact with a warm tortilla or piece of toast. I'll be taking another tip from the already-evidently-brilliant Steen and Noyes, and try melting some more of it over steamed rice.

Mango basil wraps
(very slightly adapted from Celine Steen & Tamasin Noyes'
Vegan Sandwiches Save The Day)

coconut spread
200g creamed coconut
1 cup warm water
juice of 1 lemon
2 teaspoons onion powder
1 teaspoon garlic powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon chilli flakes
1 teaspoon ground ginger
1/2 teaspoon black pepper

wraps
6 flour tortillas
1 cucumber, sliced into thin circles
1 large mango, sliced into cubes
2 avocados, sliced into cubes
24 fresh basil leaves
4 tablespoons finely chopped coriander leaves
60g sprouts of your choice

To make the spread, blend all the ingredients together in a blender or food processor until smooth. Refrigerate the spread for at least 2 hours, until firm.

Heat up the tortillas in a frypan until they're warm and pliable. Spread 2 tablespoons of the coconut spread over the centre of each tortilla, then stack up the cucumber, mango, avocado, basil, coriander and sprouts. Wrap up the tortillas tightly and eat them immediately.

Salvadorian Seitan and Bean Sandwiches

November 10, 2013

We keep meaning to revisit Vegan Sandwiches Save the Day. Our first two attempts were complete successes, but the book's downside is its complicated and time-consuming recipes - you really need to set aside an afternoon to churn out these bad boys.

Luckily, I had a Sunday afternoon free while Cindy was out and about and decided to have a shot at these seitan and bean sandwiches. Step 1 involves making your own seitan, which takes a bit more than three hours. The book has a beefy seitan version, loaded up with spices and cooked in stock for hours and hours. We went down that road, but any seitan will do the trick.

The key to the sandwich is the marinade though - it'll turn whatever meaty substitute you're using into citrussy, boozy deliciousness. Pairing marinated seitan with beans makes these sandwiches a hefty, hearty treat - to be honest I think they'd benefit from a layer of greens or something else fresh and crispy to cut through all the rest. Still - this marinated seitan is likely to be the basis of many of our future sandwiches.

Salvadorian Seitan and Bean Sandwiches

(based on a recipe from Celine Steen & Tamasin Noyes' Vegan Sandwiches Save The Day)

Marinated Seitan

400g seitan cut into sandwich slices

3 tablespoons of rum

2 tablespoons lime juice

2 tablespoons orange juice

2 teaspoons tamari

1 tablespoon tomato sauce

10g finely chopped onion

1 clove garlic, minced

2 teaspoon ground cumin

1 teaspoon ground coriander

1 teaspoon chilli flakes

1 teaspoon oil

Bean mix

1 can (410g) black beans 

1 small onion, sliced finely

1 teaspoon ground cumin

2 cloves garlic, minced

2 teaspoons olive oil

3 tablespoons reserved seitan marinade

salt and pepper to taste

Sandwich bits

Crusty bread

Vegan mayo

Mix up all the marinade ingredients and lay out the seitan strips in it - marinade for about an hour, flipping everything over halfway through.

Heat the oil in a decent sized frying pan and fry the seitan for a couple of minutes. Pour over the marinade and fry it up for a few minutes and then flip the seitan and cook for another three minutes or so until the marinade is basically cooked off.

In the meantime, get cracking on the beans. Heat the oil in another pan and throw in the onion, garlic and cumin. Stir it all together and cook for a few minutes. Throw in the beans and the reserved marinade - cook on high heat for three minutes, stirring regularly. 

Mash the beans up into a rough beany mush. Taste and then add salt and pepper necessarily. 

Assemble the sandwiches: bread, mayo, a thick smear of beans, a few slices of seitan, more mayo and more bread. Done.

The Rachel

July 21, 2013

Move over '90s hairstylings, The Rachel is now a sandwich. It's a sister to the Rueben, with pastrami or turkey replacing the corned beef and coleslaw instead of sauerkraut. It's modified further by Steen and Noyes into a day-saving vegan sandwich with baked marinated seitan and barbecue sauce.

Honestly, this sandwich is a solid day's work. First there's the chicken-style cutlets (which I adapted due to the usual U.S. vital wheat gluten/ Aussie gluten flour disparity), balls of super-gluten dough that are baked in broth for an hour and left to sit for at least two more.

Only then are the cutlets ready for marinating (1 hour) and more baking (30+ minutes). Still, they pop out sizzling with a crust of caraway and fennel seeds, dyed red with paprika and saucy with evaporated pickle juice. Yes, pickle juice. And it works.

This sandwich gets saucier still with Thousand Island dressing on the coleslaw and a recommended quarter cup of barbecue sauce per sandwich. I probably used less than half that and still found myself licking dribbled condiments from between my fingers.

After three weeks elsewhere, I was glad for a big kitchen project and we were both glad for the sandwich fillings in the fridge, ready to go all week.

'Rachel'-marinated seitan
(adapted slightly from a recipe in
Celine Steen & Tamasin Noyes' Vegan Sandwiches Save The Day)

dough
2 cups gluten flour
1/4 cup nutritional yeast flakes
1/2 cup chickpea flour
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 teaspoon onion powder
1/4 teaspoon white pepper
1 tablespoon chicken-flavoured stock powder
1 cup vegetable stock, cold
1 tablespoon rice wine vinegar
1 tablespoon olive oil

broth
3 cups vegetable stock
1 teaspoon onion powder
1/2 teaspoon dried thyme
1/2 teaspoon mustard powder
1/2 teaspoon salt

marinade
1 cup pickle juice
2 1/2 teaspoons caraway seeds, ground
2 1/2 teaspoons smoked paprika
1 teaspoon fennel seeds, ground
1 teaspoon ground coriander
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon black pepper

First you need a seitan dough. In a large bowl, stir together the gluten flour, yeast flakes, chickpea flour, garlic, onion powder, white pepper and stock powder. In a medium bowl, stir together the stock, vinegar and oil. Pour these wet ingredients into the large bowl of dry ingredients, combining them with a fork to form a dough. Add a little extra gluten flour or stock if needed. Knead the dough for about 4 minutes (I did this right in the bowl) and stretch out those gluten strands.

Preheat an oven to 150°C. In a large, high walled baking dish, whisk together the five broth ingredients.

Divide the gluten dough into 10 balls. One at a time, place the dough balls between two sheets of baking paper and roll them out to ~6mm thick. I found my dough to be quite elastic and often had to pull at the cutlets so that they weren't too thick. Plonk each one into the baking dish and don't worry if they're touching or overlapping a bit. Cover the dish with foil and bake the cutlets for 1 hour. Turn off the heat and allow them to rest in the oven for a further hour. Remove the baking dish from the oven, transfer the cutlets to absorbent paper and reserve the stock.

Use the empty baking dish to whisk together the marinade ingredients, adding 1 cup of the reserved stock. Toss in the cutlets and slather them in the (very liquid) marinade. Allow them to marinate in the fridge for at least an hour.

Turn the oven up to 200°C and bake the seitan in its dish, uncovered, for 15 minutes. Turn the cutlets over and bake for a further 15-20 minutes, until the marinade is reduced to a sticky sauce clinging to the cutlets. Slice the cutlets thinly to use as a sandwich filling.

Team the thin seitan slices with coleslaw and barbecue sauce on rye bread to make a Rachel.

'Turkey' sandwich slices

May 11-16, 2013

This installment of my sporadic adventures in home-made seitan is inspired by a newly purchased cookbook - Vegan Sandwiches Save The Day by Celine Steen & Tamasin Noyes. This book is cute, with a friendly tone, fresh veges and home-made mock meats and few difficult-to-source ingredients, wholesome wraps and veganised classics, sweet stuff and charming colour photos.  

The Gobbler Slices are a DIY seitan clearly intended to imitate turkey meat. The dough works white beans, white wine and some green herbs into the gluten. I'm still battling a disconnect between U.S. recipes' 'vital wheat gluten' and Aussie groceries' 'gluten flour' and this time I took Mel's advice, dramatically reducing the liquid involved. The seitan was very dense and tasted pleasantly of poultry herbs; it reminded me of Sanitarium's Vegie Roast, though it was far less salty. (I might try kneading it more, aiming to develop the gluten strands, if I made it again.)

Having doubled the recipe, we've spun the seitan out over many sandwiches. We started by making 'razz-elnut spinach' sandwiches (pictured above). These layer the mock slices with spinach, hazelnuts and a silken-tofu based dressing that's flavoured with white miso and raspberries. It's tart, toasty and savoury, unexpectedly brilliant.

We also took inspiration from the Double-Decker Deluxe (picture above), originally intended for the book's beef-style seitan. Here the seitan is marinated in stock, coffee and garlic, fried, and then smothered in a dressing that consists primarily of blended cashews and vinegar, plus a little chilli and parsley.

Since this seitan is dense and subtly flavoured, I'm not inclined to take it beyond the realm of sandwiches.  But sliced thinly and lavished with condiments, it's a delight and potential packed-lunch staple.

'Turkey' sandwich slices
(slightly adapted from the Gobbler Slices in
Celine Steen & Tamasin Noyes' Vegan Sandwiches Save The Day)

1 x 400g can white beans, drained
1 cup white wine
juice of 1 lemon (about 5 tablespoons)
3 tablespoons olive oil
1 tablespoon onion powder
2 teaspoons garlic powder
2 teaspoons dried parsley
1 teaspoon mustard powder
1 1/2 teaspoons sage
1 teaspoon rosemary
1 teaspoon pepper
1 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon celery seed
2 1/2 cups gluten flour
1/2 cup nutritional yeast flakes
4 tablespoons besan/chickpea flour
4 tablespoons arrowroot
1/2 cup water

In a food processor, blend together the beans, wine, lemon juice, oil and spices (onion powder through to celery seed) until smooth.

In a medium bowl, stir together the gluten flour, yeast flakes, besan and arrowroot. Pour in the wet ingredients from the food processor and stir everything together into a dough. Dig your fingers in to mix it well and develop the gluten strands! Gradually add water as needed to incorporate all the flour into the dough.

Roll out two large pieces of foil. Divide the dough in half and roll each piece into a thick cylinder about 15cm long. Roll each dough-log in foil, completely covering it and twisting around the ends.

Steam the rolls for 1 hour and 15 minutes. Allow them to cool completely before you use them. Slice the rolls as thinly as you can for sandwiches.