In the name of Seitan

Seitan- another of my roadblocks to becoming vegan.  I had it confused with tempeh, which I hate.  Recipes for seitan consist mainly of "vital wheat gluten"...gluten being about as popular in the vaguely-informed public mind as herpes, and "vital wheat gluten" itself being one of those whacky ingredients that are blithely listed in vegan cookbooks- but are simply not seen in what passed for "whole foods stores" in my part of the world.

Then I found cans of faux meat in the Chinese grocery- and lo, they were seitan!

Like George Costanza's mother, I will try and like almost anything as long as I think it's Chinese.  Really, this canned stuff is not half bad.  Flavour is somewhat meatish, certainly not that horrid dogfood taste of Sanitarium fake-meat-in-a-can.  Texture a bit chewy, not at all bad!  At a couple of bucks a can, it's certainly a useful item to have in the pantry, but homemade would surely be better and cheaper, right?

When I got Veganomicon and Appetite for Reduction I was super excited to see that there are step-by-step instructions for homemade seitan!  

The only remaining roadblock was finding the sinsiter-sounding and elusive Vital Wheat Gluten.  My usual sources didn't carry it (probably because everything on there is gluten FREE, my search just didn't find it) but I found it at the unfortunately named "Fundies" whole foods online store, and they were great to shop with, I will be back!

All ingredients gathered- I set about making my own seitan. It was EASY.  This isn't the exact recipe I used- I used the one from Veganomicon.  [ oh look- Isa Chandra has a pretty similar recipe posted here.  Use this one!] However having made it I can say that any simple recipe, like this one will do.

 If the recipe you find calls for using normal flour and washing it until everything but the gluten fraction is gone- forget it.  Spend the money on the gluten flour and whip the stuff up in minutes.  

I made it easier by cheating a bit and throwing the dough into my bread machine for a kneading.  2 or 3 minutes in the machine is fine!  This stuff is TOUGH.  I am not strong enough to knead it sufficiently by hand.  In fact the bread machine was making mechanical "slipping" noises, like even its motor wasn't up to the task.

What comes out is an incredibly tough, stringy bread dough. That's what seitan is- essentially a dumpling!  If I had known that I wouldn't have been so intimidated!  After kneading, you divide it into little loaves which then you simmer in a flavourful, salty broth of your own preference.

I wrapped each cooked little loaf (each about the size and heft of a chicken breast?) in plastic and froze most of them.  I gave one to K who made a fab looking stir-fry from it.  I made another into the seitan pot pie in Veganomicon.  My freezer is stocked with quite a few meals' worth of seitan- for the price of an $8.50 bag of expensive flour.  Pretty good eh? 

Obviously not for the gluten-intolerant, but if you are okay with wheat, seitan is not the scary weird stuff that it may seem before you meet it in person.

Nutritional Yeast- what's it good for?

Yesterday I was thinking "You know you are a real vegan when... you open your second big bag of nutritional yeast, after finishing the first".  It was kind of a milestone, so I am going to share.

One of the big roadblocks for my becoming vegan was cheese.  I freaking loved cheese.  As an ingredient, and as a food. A food group.  A whole culinary and nutritional THING. I hated the dairy industry, but loved cheese.  Talk about conflicted.  Also, fat and conflicted.  That is by far the worst kind.  The kind where you're going "poor cows... nom  nom...sob...".  Not a good look.

Enter Nutritional Yeast.

Another big roadblock for me was the ubiquity in Vegan recipes of ingredients that I simply never saw in Australia.  When 80% of a cookbook calls for weird stuff like "Bragg's Amino Acids" and "Nutritional Yeast" it just made me lose the will to live.  I'd close the book and have some cheese.

Finally, this year, having gotten super serious about going really truly vegan- I set out to find the elusive Nutritional Yeast.  It is not easy to find, but I have been buying it from https://www.organicbuyersgroup.com.au/ and have been very happy with their service.  It looks expensive, but a $17 bag of the stuff lasts me about 6 months and I use it a lot. 

What is it?  Well when you open your bag, you'll notice it smells a lot like that yummy fake cheeze flavour that you find in "foods" like cheezels and cheetos.  The bag is full of bright yellow, friendly looking flakes.  Taste them- and it's like licking the fake cheezie dust off your fingers after a Cheezel binge!  Is that a good thing?  hell yes.  Maybe it's a little bit like parmesan, but a lot like cheezel dust.

Here's what Wikipedia says about Nutritional yeast (apparently those in the know call it Nooch.  I don't, because that sounds creepy).

"Nutritional yeast is a deactivated yeast, usually Saccharomyces cerevisiae.^[1] Nutritional yeast is produced by culturing the yeast with a mixture of sugarcane and beet molasses for a period of 7 days and then harvesting, washing, drying and packaging it. This is commercially available in the form of flakes or as a yellow powder similar in texture to cornmeal, and can be found in the bulk aisle of most natural food stores. It is popular with vegans and vegetarians and may be used as an ingredient in recipes or as a condiment.^[2]

Nutritional yeast flakes

It is a source of protein and vitamins, especially the B-complex vitamins, and is a complete protein. It is also naturally low in fat and sodium and is free of sugar, dairy, and gluten. Some brands of nutritional yeast, though not all, are fortified with vitamin B12. When fortified, the vitamin B12 is produced separately (commonly Cyanocobalamin) and then added to the yeast because yeasts are fungi, whereas B12 is synthesized only by bacteria.^[3][4][5]

Nutritional yeast has a strong flavor that is described as nutty, cheesy, or creamy, which makes it popular as an ingredient in cheese substitutes. It is often used by vegans in place of parmesan cheese."

So what do I personally use Nutritional Yeast for?  Well- here you go.  Please add your own uses as I am learning new tricks all the time!

- Make a white sauce (soymilk, some kind of flour, a bit of garlic, a titch of mustard, some lemon juice. Many people like to add a half cup or so of ground up raw cashews- they do add a certain fatty goodness to the mix) Stir in a half cup or so of Nutritional Yeast.  Yummy cheeze!  You can use this is in so many ways- in the fridge it cools to a consistency like soft cheese, and while you can't slice it, it's very spreadable.  It makes good cheeze sandwiches, a dip, on crackers, or atop pizza it can't be beat.

- Use it in recipes like Mac and cheeze, any recipe that requires a cheesy flavour.  The one thing it doesn't impart is that "stringy" texture of melted cheese- so if your recipe requires that for structural reasons you might need to be a bit creative.

- Blend it into silken tofu for another cheeze that can be used on pizza, or in recipes.  Layer it into a lasagne.

- make vegan fritattas or "quiches" by following one of the recipes around that combines silken tofu, Nutritional yeast, veggies and other ingredients into an eggless delight that will delight even real men.

- add it to seitan to increase the "umami" potential.

I honestly do not miss cheese at all- in fact I get really sick now when I eat it to be polite- which won't be happening again!

The Big Roast-Up

When you are vegetarian, and especially vegan, you do seem to spend a fair amount of time on food preparation, compared to the days when meat-and-a-side graced our tables. Part of me enjoys the preparation- it's part of the practice of eating mindfully; and moreover I enjoy cooking- the anticipation of good food lovingly prepared is a pleasure in itself. I may only be planning to have a giant delicious salad for lunch, but preparing something wonderful for dinner is an observance that dulls the edge of any sense of deprivation I might momentarily feel.

There are lots of ways to expedite vegan food preparation... Think in terms of things like a big container of pre-cooked quinoa or even rice in the fridge to be used in salads, soups or what have you as the wish arises. Likewise an idea I got from a wonderful (non-vegan but very pro-wonderfulness) book called 'An Everlasting Meal' by Tamar Adler is to have a big weekly roast-up. When I return from the market with a boot full of fresh stuff, it may include goodies such as bunches of raw beetroot (pendant from their bunches of exquisitely red-veined dark green leaves); ears of sweet corn, pumpkins, kale (finally found it in Australia!), carrots, beans, broccoli, cauliflower, potato and sweet potato- you get the picture. If it's not specifically a salad vegetable, I usually include it in the Big Roast Up. Like Tamar, I roast and then happily eat all kinds of odd greens- beetroot greens are an obvious fave! But also the green part of a cauliflower, and the stems of broccoli are delicious roasted.

With the oven on and hot, I stow trays of the above veggies- things like beetroot in a bit of water covered with foil, pumpkin in large pieces with skin on, half a head of cauli, etc. I keep the oven full and rotate the trays of veggies out as they become cooked, Then the cooked goodies go into the fridge, to be used in recipes, salads, or just eaten during the coming days. I figure that if I cook it fresh, it stands a better chance of being eaten than after several days shrivelling in the fridge. I love having cold cooked pumpkin at the ready, for pizza, salad, rissotto or to have on toast.

Along with always soaking beans, because you will want them tomorrow or the next day, the Roast Up is my favourite efficient-vegan habit.