Old Bay

I know, I know, I've been away for a while. I've been trying a ton of new recipes and, mostly, failing miserably. 

The thing is, when you try new recipes - other people's recipes - you have to take a leap of faith that they'll actually be worth eating once you've finished the dish. Lately, I've been choosing some real failures....but more on that later, I promise.

Today I discovered Old Bay Seasoning, largely thanks to this recipe for seitan chicken from Vegan Yum Yum (go buy the cookbook - the recipes and the photography are great and she does a wonderful job guiding even the novice cook through recipes to find success).

I have heard of old bay before but mostly associated with seafood. It's not the kind of thing I grew up with and I have always thought of it as a regional spice blend...you know, from the south. I grew up eating cuisine form all over the country and the world but, for whatever reason, southern food was a complete mystery to my household.

Grits were mushy and flavorful at best, everything else was fried, and it left a lot to be desired. It was not until earlier this year that I had ever purchased, let alone cooked, greens.

So, as a very recent convert to southern cooking I thought I'd give the southern fried seitan a shot.

BOY OH BOY WAS I SURPRISED!

I have a wonderful recipe for seitan "chicken" that I modified from Vegetarian Carnivore's recipe and I use it all the time but this new recipe that is built around Old Bay totally blew my mind! And here I thought I only needed ONE seitan "chicken" recipe.

I made the seitan as directed but then added my own little twist at the end.

I butterflied the seitan "cutlets" and stuffed them with a mixture of caramelized onions, sauteed mushrooms, parsley and goat cheese (more on that later, too, I swear).

The result was utterly fantastic. I highly suggest you try it!

Incidentally, I served it with fiddle head ferns in a lemon garlic sauce and a side of couscous. It was one of the best meals I've made in a really long time. I'll post the lemon garlic sauce recipe later and also the fantastic peach cake that I made for dessert, which is quickly becoming my favorite dessert and overtaking my beloved linzor torte.