Dill Seitan

Eating veal is fairly new thing in Finland and it’s not eaten often. Hilkka Uusivirta’s book Suomalaisen perinteen keittokirja (1982) says that in late 19th century veal cooking was taught in cooking schools/courses and before that Finns didn’t eat veal. One of the dishes they taught to make on the courses was Dill Meat, which is veal in dill sauce. It was often served in hospitals, and the book says that usually sick people and children like it. On the other hand, many people hate it, because they had to eat it at school as kids. I’m not sure if it’s because we’re so young (we were at school in late 80′s and 90′s) but neither of us have eaten Dill Meat at school and as far as we remember, it did taste quite good. Veganized version of Dill Meat is of course Dill Seitan, and the recipe below is based on the one that I found from Hilkka Uusivirta’s book.

Dill Seitan

2 balls basic seitan
2-3 tbsp margarine
2 tbsp wheat flour
1 l vegetable broth (from cubes)
2 tbsp dried dill or 0,5 dl chopped  fresh dill
salt, pepper
3 tbsp oat cream
1 tbsp distilled vinegar
1 tbsp sugar

Cube the seitan. Melt the margarine in a sauce pan and stir in the flour. Gradually add broth until it starts to look like sauce. Add dill and seitan and simmer for a while (10 minutes or longer). Add the rest of the ingredients. Serve with boiled potatoes and boiled/steamed vegetables.

Seitanic Temptation

In Finland this kind of casseroles are called temptations (kiusaus in Finnish). They are made of potatoes and other things that are cut in sticks. Anchovies and other fish are very common companion for the potatoes, but temptations can also be vegetarian. The temptation we had today was made of root vegetables and it had seitan as a protein source. It was really yummy.

Seitanic Temptation

2 tbsp oil
2 big carrots
1 small rutabaga
1 onion
salt and pepper
0,5 tsp each basil and chervil
pinch of cayenne
6-8 potatoes
8 small Jerusalem artichokes
2 balls basic seitan
2 dl oat cream
0,5 dl water
margarine or oil for greasing the dish

Peel all the vegetables and cut them and seitan in sticks. Heat the oil in a big pan and fry onion, carrots, rutabaga, salt, pepper, cayenne and herbs for few minutes. Add potatoes and after few minutes add Jerusalem artichokes. Last add seitan, fry couple of minutes and pour in the oat cream. Rinse the cream can with 0,5 dl water and put that in the pan too. Grease an oven proof dish and transfer the food into it. Bake covered 45-60 minutes in 200 Celsius degrees.

Saturday pizza party

A friend of ours had some ultra-delicious pictures of vegan pizzas in his Facebook page (heads up, Janne N!), and we felt like tasting a bit of the unhealthy yet tasty vegan goodness he had made. Then again, if you’re already vegan, you’re prolly spending more time on thinking what you eat than an average person.

German Style Cabbage Soup

We decided to eat soup yesterday without any plans what kind of soup it would be. So we just bought carrots, cabbage and celeriac and thought they’d make a good soup with some sort of protein source, like seitan or beans. Nomad did some research in the Internet and found a German ham and potato soup recipe and we made a vegan version of it.

I made double batch of basic seitan, but used less soy sauce and no vinegar in cooking broth. Then we used the same broth to make the soup. But I think broth from bouillon cubes would be just as good, especially if you have premade seitan or don’t want to make 8 balls.

Red Cabbage Soup with Seitan
serves 8

2,5-3 l vegetable broth + bay leaf + some pepper corns (or use seitan cooking broth)
1 tbsp dried parsley
2 balls basic seitan
3 carrots
6-8 potatoes
about 200g piece of celeriac
1 big onion
half red cabbage head (quarter of a big one)
(salt if needed)

Put the broth (with bay leaf and pepper corns) and parsley into a large pot and bring to boil. Meanwhile cube the seitan, carrots, potatoes and celeriac, chop the onion and cut the cabbage into 5 cm strips. Put everything to the pot and simmer covered 20-30 minutes or until vegetables are soft. Add more water if needed.

Seitan With Garlic And Ginger

The seitan recipes seem to be most popular recipes in our blog, so here’s one more. First I wrote a recipe for basic seitan that can be used for things like stit fries, stroganoff or stews. The second recipe uses only half of the basic seitan, so if you don’t want to eat more seitan in near future, you can freeze the rest or half the recipe. We had the seitan with rutabaga casserole and beet salad.

Seitan

4 dl vital wheat gluten
2 dl gram flour
0,5 tsp smoked paprika
0,5 tsp regular paprika
salt
1 tsp black pepper
0,5 tsp white pepper

2 tbsp soy sauce
2 tbsp red wine vinegar
2 tbsp oil
1 tsp minced garlic
water

Broth
about 2 l water
1 vegetable bouillon cube
1 bay leaf
1 tsp whole pepper corns
2 tbsp soy sauce
2 tbsp red wine vinegar

Mix all the dry ingredients in a bowl. Combine soy sauce, vinegar, oil and garlic in another bowl and add water until you have 2,5 dl wet mixture. Pour the wet mixture to the dry mixture, stirr and knead couple of minutes. Make four balls.

Bring the broth to boil and cook the seitan balls in it for half an hour. You can leave the balls to the broth for another half an hour or longer to absorb flavour, but it’s not necessary.

Seitan with Garlic and Ginger

2-3 tbsp oil
2 tsp minced garlic
2 tsp minced ginger
0,5-1 tsp paprika
1 onion
2 seitan balls
3,5 dl seitan cooking broth
1 tbsp wheat flour

Cut the onion to half moons, cut the seitan to cubes or strips. Heat the oil in a frying pan, add garlic, ginger and paprika, stirr and add onion. Sauté a minute and add seitan. Fry, stirring now and then, until seitan is nice and brown on each side. Add 3 dl cooking broth to the pan and bring to boil. Mix the flour with the remaining 0,5 dl broth and add to the pan. Cook on low heat for 5 minutes.

The Great Seitan

When I became vegetarian, I didn’t like soy curls or other products that had meat like texture. Years later I learnt to love those meaty soy products (thanks to Nomad) and now seitan is one of my favourite foods. I have also started to read meat recipes to get new ideas to cook soy and seitan. I saw an interesting lingon marinade recipe in a news paper and made a seitan version of it. And it was as great as I thought it would be. The seitan recipe is from Inna Somersalo’s book Yllin kyllin, I just made a different marinade. We had carrot casserole, pickled beets and lingon jam as side dishes.

Lingon Seitan

4 dl vital wheat gluten
1 dl gram flour
1 dl soy flour
1 tbsp vegetable broth powder (or use more salt)
½ tsp salt
1 tsp garam masala
1 tsp smoked paprika
½ tsp dry ginger
1 tsp garlic powder
0,5 dl soy sauce
0,5 dl oil
2,5 dl water

marinade

2 dl lingons
2 tbsp salt
1 tbsp black pepper
2 tbsp molasses
1 dl oil
2 tbsp rosemary

Mix all the dry ingredients in a bowl. Mix oil, soy sauce and water in another bowl and combine with the dry ingredients. Knead couple of minutes. Form a roast.

Mash the lingons and add the rest of the marinade ingredients. Stirr well. Put the seitan into a plastic bag and pour the marinade in. Make sure the seitan is well covered with the marinade and put the bag in another plastic bag or a bowl, just in case. Marinade in the fridge over night.

Wrap the roast in aluminium foil and bake in 175 Celsius degrees for an hour. Check what the roast looks like and bake little longer uncovered if the surface doesn’t look firm enough.

Vegan Salami

Being a veg(etari)an doesn’t mean you can’t have a salami sandwich. And it doesn’t mean you have to buy expensive fake meats. You can easily make your own salami at home with this recipe. Tastes good on a slice of bread or can be used as a pizza topping.

Seitan Salami

Dry ingredients:
3 dl vital wheat gluten
1 dl gram flour
1 tsp salt
2 tsp paprika*
1 tsp dry mustard
1 tsp black pepper
2 tsp garlic powder
(dash of cayenne or chili powder)

Wet ingredients:
1 onion
0,5 dl oil
0,5 dl soy sauce
2-3 tbsp tomato puré
2-4 garlic cloves
1 tsp liquid smoke*
water

Mix all the dry ingredients in a bowl.

Chop the onion and fry in the oil until it’s soft and maybe little bit brown too. Mince or finely grate the garlic. Mix onion, garlic, soy sauce, tomato puré and liquid smoke in a different bowl and add enough water to get total 3 dl of wet mixture. Mix dry and wet mixtures and knead a minute or two. Form into a sausage and wrap tightly in aluminium foil. Bake 75-90 minutes in 175 Celsius degrees. The baking time depends on your oven, if your salami is dry, you baked it too long (don’t worry, it’s still great on pizza).

*If you use smoked paprika, you can omit the liquid smoke.

Return of vegan barbecue: seitan steaks and potato-cabbage salad

Seitan recipe is from Animalia‘s Vegegrilliruokia (Veggiebarbecue recipes) pamphlet. Idea for the potato-cabbage salad came from a delicious looking fresh summer cabbage head.

http://animalia.fi/

Fresh salad and delicious seitan.

Seitan steaks

0,5 soy flour
1 dl gram flour
1 dl nutritional yeast (brewer’s yeast)
5 dl vital wheat gluten
0,5 tsp ginger
1,5 tbsp soy sauce
2,5 dl water

Broth

2 tbsp balsamic vinegar
2 tbsp soy sauce
2 tbsp molasses (dark syrup)
2 vegetable bouillon cubes
2-3 l water

Marinade

2 tbsp tomato puré
0,5 dl oil
2 tbsp balsamic vinegar
3 tbsp soy sauce
0,5 tsp chili powder
1 tbsp ajvar
2 tbsp herbs
1 tsp curry powder
0,5 dl water
3 tsp minced garlic (optional, we didn’t use it)

Mix all dry ingredients in a bowl. Add soy sauce to water and combine it with dry mixture. Knead couple of minutes. Make four balls.

Bring water to boil and add rest of the broth ingredients. Put dough balls to broth and let boil 30 minutes.

Mix marinade in a small bowl, slice cooked seitan balls and put bot into plastic bag and marinade over night. Grill next day.

Potato-cabbage salad

10 new potatoes
250 g new cabbage
10 radishes
1 tbsp caper

Dressing

3 tbsp olive oil
2 tbsp apple vinegar
2 tsp mustard
1 tsp dried mint
2 minced garlic cloves
salt and freshly ground black pepper

Cook potatoes in boiling water until they are soft. Cube the potatoes, shred cabbage and slice radishes. Mix dressing ingredients in a cup and combine with salad.