Another dish with my homemade seitan!

Spaghetti with Seitan Balls

Ingredients
200g of Seitan (about 20 Balls)
1.5dl Dried Funnel Chantarelles (or 200g Fresh)
2 Small Yellow Onions
1 Jar of Tomato Passata (500g)
1dl Red Wine (I used a Portuguese one: CARM Douro, see below for more details on the wine)
Basil, Oregano, Thyme, Rosemary, and some Black Pepper from a Grinder
200g Whole Wheat Spaghetti

Serves two. I used my homemade seitan, but I didn’t marinate it for this dish because I thought that the sauce would be quite sufficient, as it was. However, my seitan is quite spicy due to the chipotle I used, and if you’re using very bland seitan, you might wish to marinate it in the red wine for at least a couple of hours. The mushrooms could be replaced with any type of mushroom really, and in fact I recommed not using a mushroom with a very delicate flavour, as it will get covered by the sauce. However, I’ve got a batch of dried Finnish Funnel Chantarells so I opted for those.

Cooking
Time required: ~45min (if using prepared seitan)
-Rehydrate the mushrooms in some water (15min) if using dried ones like I did.
-Heat some oil in a pan.
-Chop the onions and fry on their own until golden.
-Drain the rehydrated mushrooms and add to pan.
-Heat water for pasta at this point.
-After a few minutes, add the red wine and the herbs, this is a good time to add the seitan balls as well.
-Let the seitan balls and mushrooms soak up the red wine for some 5min.
-Your water for the pasta should now be about ready, so put the spaghetti in.
-Add the tomato passata to the pan and simmer on low heat (under a cover) for 10-15min.

Spaghetti with Seitan Balls, and CARM Douro

Here served with some salad and a side of kalamata olives. The Seitan Balls (or Balls of Seitan, if you like) were quite tasty, having soaked some flavours from the red wine and the mushrooms & herbs. The sauce does cover the taste of the mushrooms quite effectively, but they certainly add to the dish. I find rosemary to be the perfect herb to complement mushrooms, it supports the earthy flavour.

I also had a glass of the red wine that I used for cooking — far too good for cooking actually, but it’s the only one I had handy! The wine is Portuguese, from Casa Agrícola Roboredo Madeira, or CARM, it’s their 2009 Douro (link to 2008 vintage), 13.5% ABV, with a mixture of three grapes: Tinta Roriz, Touriga Franca, and Touriga Nacional. Portuguese wines are not very readily available outside Portugal (this was a featured wine at the Finnish alcohol monopoly, Alko, about 15 euros for the bottle), which is a pity, because they are rather good in my experience. This one is surprisingly full bodied and quite spicy, similar to a light Shiraz or an intensive (Australian) Sangiovese. In fact, it’s so good that I almost fancy doing a separate wine review, but with the beer reviews already keeping me busy and clogging the blog, I better abstain from getting into wine reviews for now…