Vegan Meat/s

Pastrami-style seitan.

Seitan O'Greatness.

Cheatin' Beef-style Roast sandwiches.

Seitan O'Greatness, Pastrami, and Cheddar Cheezly baguette

I love all of these faux-meats.
The Pastrami-style Seitan from Vegan Diner is the most amazing of them all: it's incredibly heavy, dense, juicy, and flavoursome.
It's essentially this recipe, with a different spice combination.
I have it as-is in pastrami sandwiches, or sliced-thin, and heated, to make unbelievable hot 'beef' sandwiches.

Seitan O'Greatness has a beautiful spicy tomato smell when cooking, and savoury flavour when eating.
Great on sandwiches, too - can also be used anywhere you'd normally use pepperoni: on pizzas, for example.

Cheatin' Beef-style Roast: this is a pre-made product from Redwood, that can be found in the chilled section of Holland and Barratt, and similar stores (Boots Herbal Stores).
Ignore the picture on the packaging: it's a very good, classy foodstuff.

I had this before I had the others - or had even bought wheat gluten - for Christmas dinner.
I was shocked: it's stunning. Dense, meaty, genuinely beef-flavoured...
As shown in the pictures, I think it's great sliced, wrapped in foil with some herbs/seasoning, warmed in the oven, and on sandwiches: when it melts the butter/margarine...perfect.

Chickpea Cutlets

One of the first recipes I made when I got some wheat gluten, as I only had Isa Chandra cookbooks, and was wheat gluten-naive; since then, i've made various faux meats, sausages, etc.

The first recipe I made with wheat gluten, in fact, was a Vegan with a Vengeance recipe that required the gluten be cooked in a stock, and it gave less than satisfactory results (plus: the stock calls for a large amount of ingredients, and that expense - along with the relatively complicated cooking instructions - deterred me), so I haven't boiled/simmered seitan since.
The steaming and roasting methods are amazing, though, and i'll share some of the results i've had with these methods in upcoming posts.
The cutlets, however, are shallow fried, giving a crispy exterior.

I love the use of breadcrumbs in this recipe: the really make the texture of the cutlets something unique, and my overall opinion of the cutlets is that they're light (on account of the herbs), chewy, coarse, and delicately spiced.
I've only ever had them with vegetables (as pictured above) and gravy; however, I like Isa's suggestion that you eat them on sandwiches.

Recipe here.

UPDATE:

I made these again, last night, with the Rich Brown Gravy from Julie Hasson's Vegan Diner (my favourite cookbook of all time). Here are some pictures:

Chickpea Cutlets with mashed potatoes, steamed broad beans, broccoli, and carrots.

...with 'Rich Brown Gravy poured over.

From above.

I can't recommend this gravy highly enough; It's so thick, flavoursome, and tasty; and it's quick and easy to make.
I advocate giving up on instant gravy - Bisto, etc. - and getting a few simple, amazing, gravy recipes in your repertoire (or getting a repertoire, and then adding them to it).
Here is my favourite chef, Julie Hasson, making 'Two Pepper Gravy' (the next gravy recipe in Vegan Diner):


Two Pepper Golden Gravy at Everyday Dish TV.

Where to Buy Wheat Gluten in the UK.

A common question (I wrote it as an instruction, not a question - hence the lack of a question mark) in Britain - and one that all-too-often goes unanswered, as it is a very rare foodstuff over here.

Fortunately, there are a couple of places that sell it (that i've found after a lengthy, determined search):

The Low Carb Megastore - £2.85 for 1 Kg, plus £5.49 courier delivery (i've ordered as many as seven kilos without the delivery charge increasing).

and Honest to Goodness - £1.59 for 500g, £2.99 for 1 Kg, or £4.39 for 1.5 Kg - plus £4.49 delivery.

Now, because i'm very interested in mathematics, and not paying more than I absolutely have to, I have noted the following:

 - although 1 kilo from the Low Carb Megastore is 14p cheaper than one from Honest to Goodness, the delivery from Honest to Goodness is £1 cheaper...so, provided that you buy less than 8 kilos (in 1 Kg bags), it will be cheaper to buy from Honest to Goodness.
8 kilos or more, and it is cheaper from The Low Carb Megastore.

 - it is cheaper to buy 1.5 Kg bags up to 12 Kgs (eight bags), than the equivalent weight from The Low Carb Megastore - as for every 3 Kgs (in 1.5 Kg bags), Honest to Goodness is 23p more expensive than The Low Carb Megastore (3 x 1 Kg bags from LCM = £8.55; 2 x 1.5 Kg bags from HTG = £8.78), but the postage is £1 less...any more, and including postage, The Low Carb Megastore is cheaper.

Wow.
I hope you followed that/it was helpful.

I have only ever bought from the Low Carb Megastore, as I just recently discovered Honest to Goodness, and they have just dropped their prices (two 500g bags were cheaper than one 1 Kg bag, before).
I have never had any problems with the wheat gluten from The Low Carb Megastore, but as I am not living a 'low-carb' life, I can never find anything else to put in my basket; maybe the same will be true of Honest to Goodness, but i'll be trying their wheat gluten next time I order some.

Good day.

My Vegan Experience of Curry

'Chicken' Curry - in the pan.

Spinach and Chickpea curry - on the plate.

Maybe my favourite food, pre-vegetarian/vegan days, was restaurant/take-away chicken tikka phal.
The curry was incredibly well spiced, and I thought the texture and consistency of the chicken was an excellent, filling ingredient.
Since I stopped eating meat, some three and a half years ago, however, i've never had a curry that was as well put together; that's not to say that vegan cuisine is deficient: it is to say that vegetarian options don't tend to warrant as much effort from cooks as meat-based ones...so although I have vegetable phals nowadays, they just seem to throw in whatever random vegetables they have that day (sprouts? Seriously dude...? It isn't even near Christmas.), caring little for consistency in the recipe, the actual dish prepeared on the day, or curries in general.

The only curry i've ever made myself, since quitting meat, is the Spinach and Chickpea Curry pictured above; i've never really gone in for shop-bought meat analogues - especially chicken ones - so I never bothered to pursue making my own 'chicken' rogan josh, or vindaloo.
However, since discovering seitan, and embarking on a 'faux-meat'-making spree (photos and descriptions in forthcoming posts...), i've been slowly working my way towards making a good 'chicken' curry - the kind you get at curry houses, with all the sauce you dip naan bread in until the bread's all gone, and you have to finally eat the curry...but I digress.

Anyway, after doing some research, I concluded that the way to make a 'tomato-based' curry like a rogan josh, jalfrezi, vindaloo, phal, etc., that we're all familiar with from curry house menus, was to make the same curry paste i've always made for the spinach and chickpea curry - but then add the 'meat'; marinade it; and add tomato juice/passata, which the curry paste would flavour, giving the delicious sauce I craved...

I'd never had a chicken-style seitan recipe, however, and so I went to a new friend of mine - Liz, from Cooking the Vegan Books, who lives very nearby, as luck would have it - to ask if she had one; she almost immediately replied that she did! Steamed White Seitan from Viva! Vegan by Terry Hope Romero.
The following night, I made the incredible 'chicken' curry you see above.

Recipe

First, I made the Steamed White Seitan (see the above link for the recipe) a day in advance, as recommended.

Chicken'style Seitan: some cubed, some whole.

All I had to do then was make the curry (the curry paste was based on the one used in the Spinach Curry from VWAV).

Ingredients

1 Tin of Plum Tomatoes

3 Tbsp Vegetable Oil

3 Tsp Mustard Seeds

2 Medium Onions - Diced

4 Cloves of Garlic - chopped finely

2 Tbsp Fresh Ginger - chopped finely

6 Finger Chillies - 2 sliced into rounds; 4 sliced lengthwise (use more or less depending on taste.)

1 Handful of Fresh Coriander - rinsed and chopped coarsely

4 Tsp Hot Curry Powder

2 Tsp Ground Cumin

2 Tsp Ground Coriander

1 Tsp Turmeric

1 Tsp Chilli Powder

1/2 Tsp Asafoetida

1 Tsp Salt

1/2 the Steamed White Seitan - cut into big, curry-style chunks

500g Passata

Method

Take the tomatoes, and squeeze the excess juice out of them; tear into pieces, and place in a bowl.

Put a stockpot on a medium-heat.

Chop onion, ginger, and garlic.

When the stockpot is heated, pour in the oil, and mustard seeds. Cover so the seeds don't escape.

After about a minute, add onion and stir.

Stir periodically until the onions start to brown (5-10 minutes); when they do, add the garlic, ginger, chillies, and coriander; stir well.

After two minutes, add the spices/salt, and 5 Tbsp of the tomato juice from the tin; stir well. This is the curry paste, and should be very pungent, and powerful (if using a lot of chillies, make sure the kitchen is well-ventilated).

After a minute, add the 'Chicken', and coat well with the curry paste, stirring frequently.

Add the tomatoes after a minute, and mix well.

The curry - before adding the passata and tomato juice.

After a couple of minutes, when the 'chicken' is well marinated, add the passata and the juice from the tinned tomatoes; stir well, reduce heat to simmer, and cover.

Stir periodically for 15-20 minutes. Remove from the heat and serve with basmati rice, curry-spiced potatoes, and fluffy naan bread - if you're like me; or whatever you like, if you're not.

Et voila!

Oh yeah: the curry served three grown men, and two vegans and an American omnivore loved it: "Curry-house worthy." was the determination - and I am inclined to agree: a very impressive meal.

Addendum: the naan breads were incredible - comparable to the best ones i've ever had at a curry house.

They are by a company called The Clay Oven Bakery - 'Fresh, hand-made naan breads.' - and I bought them, pre-packed, from an ethnic food supermarket called Pak Foods, which has five stores, including one in Stoke-on-Trent, luckily for me.

 

They also have massive (seriously: massive.) bunches of fresh coriander for only 19p. Yeah. And they sell black salt for 49p a bag, and have an overwhelming amount of dried beans, pulses and legumes:

And on, and on, and on...

Hot Dogs

 

These hot dogs are brilliant. They are exactly like 'meat' hot dogs in terms of consistency, thus evoking childhood memories when eating them...

What you can see in the above picture is the sausages - made from scratch, according to a recipe from the incredible Julie Hasson - on normal finger rolls, with lettuce (I prefer round lettuce: iceberg offends me...), fried onions, diced cucumber, ketchup, and American mustard. I had some guacamole, and a home-made red pepper and cashew 'cheddar' dip, so I served them over plain nachos as a side-dish.

I cannot recommend these sausages/hot dogs highly enough - especially if, like me, you find that food is evocative of good memories, or you just like sausages; these lend themselves to being sliced, and added to pasta sauces, pizzas, sandwiches, etc., as well as to being spiced/flavoured a massive number of ways.

From sausage to hot dog:

First Post: Sushi.

In the brief spell when I was a vegetarian - as opposed to a vegan - I was quite a fan of the pre-made vegetarian sushi packs they had in supermarkets.

Nowadays, I couldn't countenance eating such sushi - even if it was vegan: it's sacrilege to reduce this great food to something pre-packed in a chiller, alongside BLT/tuna and sweetcorn sandwiches, and other convenience foods.

So some years later, I finally got the necessary things together, and made my own sushi.

The roll in the middle was a California Roll - the rice is outside the nori, and coated with sesame seeds.

All the rolls turned out really well; the fillings were beautiful - as was the rice, which I seasoned with rice vinegar, sugar, and salt (as I understand is traditional in Japan).

Fillings included roasted red peppers (that I roasted myself); sweet potato; cucumber; carrot; spring onion; avocado; and asparagus.

 

I served it with soy sauce, wasabi, and sliced, pickled ginger as a pallette cleanser.