Seitanic Warmaster

Today I had a thought that maybe I would attach a link to my other blog, The Baking [enter synonym with curmudgeon that starts with a B].  I looked up synonyms and the only B one I could find was Bellyacher.  That's stupid.

Moving on.

I made maki again tonight, this time with sweet potato.  Because I'm sick, or tired, or just sick and tired, I didn't take any pictures and you will never get to see what I made.  Let's go with an oldie but a goodie.

SEITAN


Despite being vegan, seitan is a pretty rad food.  Whether you're a PETA fanatic or an insatiable blood mouth, you'll probably like it.  By gosh, my parents even like it!  Either way, it's chewy, it's salty and it's very versatile.  I'm not going to be that person and steal a recipe, so I'll be honest that my seitan recipe is straight out of the Veganomicon.  I'll give them props for the name, but that's about it.  HEY OH!

So here it is.  Reprinted without permission.

SIMPLE SEITAN


What you'll need:


1 Cup Vital Wheat Gluten (if you want to be a real goober, you can make your own with flour.  But don't do that, goober)
3 tbsp Nutritional Yeast
1/2 Cup cool veggie broth (this is mostly because you are going to be using your hands to mix)
1/4 Soy Sauce (The higher the sodium, the higher your blood pressure!!!)
1 tbsp olive oil
2 cloves super fine chopped garlic


Then you've got the broth:


For each pound, which is what the above recipe yields, I use this much for the broth:


4 cups veggie broth
1/4 cup soy sauce


For every extra pound you make, I add another half of that broth.  So 2 cups and 1/8 cup.  You get the deal, I hope.


This is what you do:  You start your broth going.  Put it in a big ass pot and put on low heat while you get the other stuff going.  In one bowl, combine your dry ingredients.  In the other, combine the wet.  Make a little well in your dry ingredients and poor in your wet slowly like you're drowning a little hateful and selfish society of nutritional yeast.  Beautiful.  Mix that shit up and sort of give it a little knead here and there.  Eventually, you will get sort of a tough spongy mass.  Take it out of the bowl and put it on your counter.  I like to make mine into a lot.  Then, slice it into pieces.  For each pound, I would say you'll yield about 4 or 5 pieces and for every pound you add another 3 pieces.  Yum.

Throw it in your broth and put your broth on HIGH.  Let it boil and then right when the first boil occurs turn it down to a simmer and keep it covered.  Then, you just leave it alone for an hour.

Feel free to impatiently poke or flip the pieces throughout this hour, as I do.

When the hours is up, throw it into a colander to cool down.  This stuff, because it's nice and high in sodium, will last a good amount of time and can be eaten over the week.  To story it just throw it into a container with a little broth or put each piece in a baggy with a tiny bit of broth.  You just don't want it to dry out.

Now you've made Seitan.  Congratulations, YOU ARE NOW VEGAN.

So what do you do with it?  Here's a pretty simple recipe that even your friend who requests no lettuce on his big mac will enjoy:

GRIT FRIED SEITAN WITH THICK MUSHROOM GRAVY


For the seitan:


Thin slices of seitan, as many as you want
Grits/cornmeal
Flour
Nutritional yeast
Olive oil


For the gravy:


A few cups of mushrooms
2 cups veggie broth 
1 small white onion (none of that nasty yellow crap)
6 cloves chopped garlic
1/4 cup flour
Fresh sage
Lots of pepper
Salt to taste


I see that you're getting bored.  Here's a picture of my cat:

So beautiful.  So stoic.

Ok, so you want to make the food.  If you didn't notice, I don't really have a recipe for this and I usually just wing most stuff.  I like to look up recipes and then not follow them, thus forming my own concoctions that I later test out on many test subjects.  Shaunna was my test subject for YEARS.  That is why she is so pissed all the time.

This is also why none of my ingredients are in order.

Get your gravy started up.  Finely chop the onion and throw them in a sauce pan with some oil.  When the pieces begin to get soft, add the chopped garlic.  Let these brown a little bit and then throw in your mushrooms and add a little more oil.  Stir around and look bored for a minute and then add the veggie broth and a handful of sage.  I like a lot of sage.  You decide.

Cover this up and let it simmer for a bit.

On the other side, get yourself a pan heated up on medium heat and pour in a nice layer or oil.  You don't need to get wild and crazy unless you are very passionate about deep frying your food.  I support this, but do not do it myself.

Mix together equal parts flour and grits in a bowl or on a place.  Add a handful of nutritional yeast and mix it up.  Flop the pieces of seitan around in it for a bit until it's nice and covered.  Since you likely and intelligently just took your seitan out of the bowl in which it was sitting in some broth, it is unnecessary to dip it in something before you coat it.  If you stupidly started this recipe before you read the whole post, please feel free to put it back into the broth for a minute and follow my directions again.

Throw it in the pan on medium heat and fry it up.  When it's done, it'll look something like this:

You're vegan now.

While you're frying your stuff up, check out the gravy.  If it's at a nice little simmer, you can add in a little flour at a time.  You might need less or more than 1/4 cup.  I'll be honest, that was just a total guess and I actually have no idea how much to you.

In further honesty, I also don't even know if the recipe for this gravy is accurate.  GOOD LUCK.

While you're adding the flour bring your gravy to a boil.  Keep adding a little bit at a time until it thickens and once it's nice and thick turn the heat down to very very low or nothing at all.  Taste it.  Does it suck?  Add a crap load of pepper and a tad bit of salt.  Do this until it doesn't taste crappy.

Oh yeah, I might have forgotten to tell you to chop up the mushrooms and not add them whole.  Whoops.  You know now!

God this is so long.  Ok, so by now you will have some gravy and some fried seitan.  You know what you should do?  THIS:

Wow.  THAT looks good.

Now, if you're wondering what to serve it with, you can do what I did and make aged cheddar grits and garlic kale.  Both are easy and very fitting sides for this dish.

I'm getting impatient, so I'll try to do this quickly to spare both myself and you.

CHEDDAR GRITS


1/2 pound aged cheddar (and I mean, AGED.  The sharper the better this turns out)
Milk or soy milk
Butter
Grits
Veggie broth


In a small pot, boil 2 1/2 cups broth and add a little over 1 and 1/2 cups grits.  Let this simmer until the grits get soft, but they don't need to be super soft.  You will be adding them to the cheese sauce.


In a sauce pan, pour in about 1 cup milk and 2 tbsps butter.  Keep this on low heat.  If you put it on high heat, your cheese will curdle and you will have ruined the meal for everyone.  Cut the cheese up in chunks and throw into the milk.  When everything is melted and mixed up, add the cooked grits.  Let this simmer for a minute or two and then mix the grits around.  The grits should start to soften and become cheesy.  Now, don't be surprised, but at the grits cool they will begin to harden.

I like to add a little cracked pepper to the grits because cheese and pepper is bliss.

GARLIC KALE


Kale
5 cloves garlic
Olive oil
Butter


In a pan, heat up a little olive oil and put equal parts butter in their.  Throw in the chopped garlic cloves and let the flavors mix for a couple minutes.  You're just going to chop up the kale in manageable pieces and toss it in the warm mixture while still over the stove.  I like it cook for about 2 minutes just to warm up the kale a bit and then throw it on a plate.

Feed it to your friends.  Like this:

Now EVERYONE is happy.

Including my friend Steve:

Happiness personified (he really did eat that food, FYE).

Now, like Steve you can enjoy a sweet piece of homemade sweet potato pie (next up, I promise), a green zebra tomato, and a glass of home-brewed bum hard cider.

Stay metal.