make seitan

Sunday, I decided, would be my big cooking day-mostly because I wanted to stay home and read “Letters to a Young Teacher,” and thought that cooking would enable me to do this better than would, say, doing work of importance.

Seitan is one of those foods that I’d never had, but thought that I was being a bad vegetarian (or a bad pseudo-vegetarian, in my case) by not eating. And of course, I had to do it the hard way.

I made the seitan cutlets recipe from Veganomicon. I did this as an excuse to make the vegan banh mi/French dip sandwiches also in the book. They were pretty easy, but man, unattractive.

I probably should’ve just had a regular banh mi. Seitan isn’t bad, but mine was so salty, even with low-sodium soy sauce. Also, very chewy.

So now I have a whole lot of vital wheat gluten, because I couldn’t find a place that sold it in bulk. The brightest point of this story is that an old friend of mine, a guy I actually went to elementary school on with, works at the co-op where I bought it, and we have someday plans to go get a beer and see a show together, so that good came out of it.

I dared to add Torula Yeast to it, since I’d had it for so long and wanted to get some use out of it. It had a funny taste because of this addition, but next time I’ll omit it. I’d like to make more another day.

I was at The Vital Health Store the other day, and found a bag of powder of gluten flour to make some. I have several recipes so I can create it anytime I want! I just have to move my bum to do it.

http://www.postpunkkitchen.com/forum/viewtopic.php?pid=302590

I followed that recipe and it was easy and came out great!

So I attempted to make seitan fajitas… pretty easy to make since I cheated and just bought the actual seitan from the co-op, so all I had to do is throw it in a pan with some green peppers and garlic and stuff. I think the seitan itself would have been good, but the recipe I used must have been bad. I think it was the soy sauce.

My dad liked it, which was surprising. He doesn’t even like mushrooms.

Anyway, I think I might try again with a different recipe. Maybe I’ll just use taco seasoning or something, that could be good.