This dish has some obvious French influences, but without the unhealthy and meaty connotations.

Seitan and Pearl Onions in Red Wine Sauce 1

Ingredients
2-4 Seitan Steaks
~20 Pearl Onions
1-2dl of Red Wine
Bunch of Collard Greens
1 Cup of Tri-Color Quinoa
French Herbs

Serves two.

Cooking
Time required: ~45min (if using prepared seitan)
-Peel the pearl onions and sauteé in red wine with some French herbs until tender.
-Chop the seitan steaks into chunks of desired size and brown on a separate pan, adding red wine towards the end
-Prepare the collard greens separately and season to taste; they take a while to cook down.
-Cook the quinoa in a pot or a rice cooker.

Seitan and Pearl Onions in Red Wine Sauce 2

Another dish with homemade seitan. I wanted to try how it would work with a red wine sauce, and the results were excellent. I do sometimes use red wine in cooking, but most often in pasta sauces. The seitan soaked up the flavours nicely and produced a very “meaty” dish. I used Californian Pinot Noir. I haven’t really cooked with Pearl Onions before, but after this sweet encounter I might use them as well more often; not only did they improve with the wine, but they also got a nice colour. The collards were cooked in a bit too much salt this time, but ideally they would also complement this dish very well. This was certainly one of the most enjoyable dishes that we’ve cooked this year.

This is a childhood food for me, mum used to make these at rare occasions. I’ve no idea what these would be called in English, apart from ‘French Toast, ice cream, and jam’, but in Finnish they’re called ‘rich knights’ (as opposed to ‘poor knights’, which is essentially just French toast). Well, that’s what mum called them at any rate! Here’s a veganized version. These are definitely a breakfast food.

Rich Knights

Ingredients
4 Slices of Toast
4 Scoops of Vegan (Soy/Oat/Coconut) Ice Cream
Jam (We used raspberry)
~1 Cup of Soy Milk
~1 Cup of Soy Yoghurt
Vanilla
Cinnamon

Cooking
Time required: ~25min
-Mix the soy milk and yoghurt, adding the spices.
-Soak each slice of toast thoroughly in the wet mixture, and fry on a hot pan until brown on each side.
-Spread the jam on the slices of toast and add a scoop of ice cream on each slice.

Munch!

Rocket-Kale Tofu Scramble & Crumpets

Breakfast time! I think that tofu scramble makes a very nice breakfast; I’ve posted one good recipe for such a breakfast before. This time I experimented a bit though. I made some kale chips crisps (well, I’d call them crisps rather than chips, as in potato crisps as opposed to potato chips. Which is what they call French fries here in the US. Nevermind.) the previous night, and decided to experiment with half of them. You can find numerous detailed recipes and even videos about making kale crisps online, so I’m not going to go explain them — it suffices to say that they’re very tasty! I’ve made them a few times before; this batch was made with Applewood Smoked salt. Anyway, for this dish the Kale was crumbled into tiny pieces and added to the tofu scramble for an interesting smoky flavour.

Ingredients
1 Block of Silken Tofu (350g, I use the Mori-Nu brand, firm)
1 Yellow Onion
~3 Cups of Kale Crisps, crumbled
Handful of Fresh Rocket (i.e. Arugula)
Chipotle
2 Crumpets (i.e. “English Muffins”)

Breakfast for two!

Cooking
Time required: ~15min
-Chop the onion into small cubes and sauteé on a pan.
-Add the Silken tofu, scramble with a fork.
-You can add some chipotle (or other spices) to taste at this point.
-Add a desired amount of rocket in batches, mixing it in.
-Finally add the crumbled kale crisps, and you should be done very soon.
-Toast the crumpets and serve with some vegan margarine (e.g. Earth Balance).

Rocket-Kale Tofu Scramble

I like tofu scramble with toast, but I spotted some crumpets (which they call “English Muffins” in the US) in one of the local stores and had to get them — they’re one of these highly processed fairly unhealthy foods that are nevertheless vegan (at least the ones I’ve seen). They were quite nice toasted and with some Earth Balance. Anyway, the tofu scramble turned out good too, the combination of the kale crisps with applewood smoked salt and a generous amount of chipotle gave the scramble a smoky flavour, which goes well with the peppery flavour of the rocket.

For this recipe I used only my second ever batch of homemade seitan. It turned out pretty good, tastier than the first one. I still think it requires some further marination or frying with spices, but it is perfectly good straight out of the broth.

I’ve got a huge batch of seitan ingredients now — I ordered four 22oz packs of Bob’s Red Mill Vital Wheat Gluten and two 22oz packs of their Garbanzo Bean Flour. These were just $35 altogether with postage included and they will make a MASSIVE amount of seitan. I’m estimating eight or so batches, each of which will make maybe five or six meals for two people. That’s pretty cheap! The seitan you can buy from stores is generally flavourless, has inferior consistency, and costs about $5 for a pack which makes maybe two meals, so there’s no contest here. Plus you get to experiment with the spicing of course.

Peppered Seitan Steaks & Mashed Potatoes

I used the same proportions of wheat gluten and gram flour (i.e. chickpea/garbanzo bean flour) as I did before, namely 2:1, and roughly the same amount of liquids. The spicing was slightly different, although I did use chipotle again. The chipotle was supplemented with some applewood smoked salt and some of the liquid was replaced with a mixture of tamari, mirin, and miso. The broth was quite similar to the one I used before. Another obvious deviation from my previous batch was that I also formed some steaks from the seitan mass (before boiling it). Anyway, since I’ve already posted a seitan recipe, I’m just going to assume that you’re using ready-made seitan for the purposes of this one.

Ingredients
4 Seitan Steaks (previously prepared)
3-4 Potatoes (large)
Cauliflower (half)
Black Pepper from Grinder
Curry Powder
Earth Balance (or other vegan margarine)
Soy/Oat/Almond Milk
Ground Nutmeg

Peppered Seitan Steaks

Serves two. The amount of Earth Balance and soy milk needed depends on how much potato mass you end up with and what kind of consistency you’re looking for. It might be in the range of a tablespoon of margarine and a cup of soy milk. The side of curried cauliflower is of course entirely optional, we just happened to have some handy. Broccoli would go quite nicely as well. You could also prepare some sort of a brown sauce or gravy for these, but I don’t think it’s necessary. I would’ve decorated the mashed potatoes with some fresh coriander or other fresh herbs, but we didn’t have any in the house when cooking this, so this is what you get.

Cooking
Time required: ~50min
-Peel and dice the potatoes (fairly small), boil until soft.
-Mash the diced potatoes when soft, adding margarine and soy milk in small quantities until desired consistency is reached.
-Heat some oil in a pan, fry the seitan steaks on both sides, about 5-8min each side or until nicely browned.
-Add black pepper from grinder to taste to both sides of the seitan steaks towards the end.
-Chop the cauliflower into chunks.
-On a separate pan or on the side of the previous pan, heat some oil and fry the cauliflower chunks in curry powder until nice and brown.

Another hearty meal! Long ago as a kid, when I was a meat eater, I liked peppered steaks — not so much because of meat, but because of the pepper! The peppered seitan steaks take care of that childhood memory, except that they’re tastier and certainly healthier. The consistency turned out very nice and chewy, but not gummy. I used quite a lot of pepper for these, so I couldn’t quite tell how the seitan was until I tried some of it from the same batch without the pepper; I guess that this would be a good dish even if your seitan turns out to be a bit flavourless. I made some extra steaks as well, some of which were eaten as burgers on homemade molasses-oatmeal-carrot rolls with mustard.

Smoked Tomato Loaf with Rosemary Potatoes

Field Roast, whose sausages were used in a previous recipe, also do a selection of Quarter Loaves. For this dish we used their Smoked Tomato Loaf.

Ingredients
1 Field Roast Smoked Tomato Quarter Loaf
7 Red Potatoes (Small)
Rosemary
~20 Asparagus Stalks
Rocket (i.e. Arugula)
Balsamic Vinegar and Oil for Vinaigrette

Rosemary Potatoes

Serves two. The Field Roast Loaf is in fact three servings (and a lot of protein!), but I had been to the gym, biking, and running, so I needed all the protein I could get!

Cooking
Time required: ~50min
-Heat oven to 375 Fahrenheit.
-Slice the potatoes into thick slices (no need to peel), and place on an oiled baking tray; make sure to oil the surface of the potatoes too!
-Sprinkle the potatoes with chopped rosemary (we used dried, but fresh is even better).
-On a separate, covered dish, bake the Field Roast Loaf whole.
-Once the potatoes have baked for 20-30min (or when the potatoes are nice and brown on one side), flip them over and bake until done.
-Boil or steam the asparagus until nice and tender; this should take 5-10min.
-Make a vinaigrette by whisking the balsamic vinegar and the oil together (you can use any kind of balsamic vinegar and oil really, we used a 50/50 mix).
-Serve the asparagus and rocket as a side, with some vinaigrette sprinkled on top.

Smoked Tomato Loaf

This is a good, hearty, “meat and potatoes” -type meal. Very easy to make when using the excellent Field Roast brand of vegan grain meats (I’m curious to try the other loaves — wild mushroom, and lentil & sage, if we can find them somewhere). The potatoes got nice and crispy, but to achieve that you have to use just the right amount of oil. I’m planning to make some cajun potatoes with a similar method soon. The vinaigrette we used here has been tried and tested with asparagus before, and it’s still tasty.