Vegan Corned "Beef" Seitan

Growing up, my dad used to tell me a story about a very memorable St. Patrick's day during his childhood.  Dad attended an Irish Catholic grammar school and was the only kid in school who was not of Irish descent (Dad's side is Scottish, English, and Slovene, but not Irish). Year after year, Dad would recount to me the story of one St. Patrick's day when his mother sent him to school in an orange shirt. As you might imagine, the nuns were displeased.

Since everyone's Irish on St. Patrick's Day, I thought I'd get into the spirit by coming up with a vegan menu to celebrate the day. Unfortunately, the boyfriend is serving in the National Guard in KY until late Thursday night (boo) so we'll be having our own little St. Patrick's Day feast on Friday.

We'll be having:

Vegan Corned "Beef" Seitan Sandwiches

and

Chocolate Guinness Pudding

All vegan, of course.

If you've never made your own seitan, let me first say that this particular version has a ton of ingredients. Usually when I make seitan it is much simpler but this really needs to taste as much like corned beef as possible and, in order to do that, you really need to get the depth of flavor from the spices that are in traditional corned beef. Also note, if you've made seitan at home before, this is the kind of seitan you don't have to rinse. If that means nothing to you at all, don't worry - we'll cover it in a future blog.

For the seitan, you will need:

1¼ c wheat gluten
½ tbsp mustard
½ tbsp pepper
1 tsp coriander
1 tsp salt
½ tsp cloves
½ tsp red pepper
½ tsp cinnamon
½ tsp allspice
1 c cold water
½ c kidney beans, mashed
2 tbsp oil
½” ginger root, grated
1 clove garlic, minced
1 tbsp brown sugar
1 tbsp tomato paste

Preheat oven to 325°. 

In a small bowl, mix together all of your dry ingredients: wheat gluten, mustard, pepper, coriander, salt, cloves, red pepper, cinnamon, and allspice. 

In a medium bowl, mix together all of your wet ingredients. 

Next, mix together the wet and dry ingredients. I usually start with a big wooden spoon and then, when I just can't get it to mix any further, I turn the whole mess out onto my counter and finish mixing it with my hands. You want to be sure to keep kneading everything together once it is all mixed because that helps to activate the gluten.

Shape dough into a log about 10 inches long and roll tightly in aluminum foil (you can double roll it if you have to). Twist the ends to seal. 

Bake it for an hour and fifteen minutes. Turn it once, about half way through. 

After you remove it from the oven, be sure to let it cool completely. You can then slice it and make it into sandwiches. It's actually easier to cut it into really thin slices if you let it cool in the fridge first. Of course, if you were going for the more traditional "corned beef and cabbage" route, then by all means, slice it when it's still warm and serve with cabbage.

If your knife skills simply don't allow you to cut really thin slices (or if your knives are dull and you need to invest in new ones, like I do), I would suggest using your mandolin to make nice, even slices for your sandwiches.

You can serve this on whatever bread you like. I think soda bread would be more traditionally Irish but it would also be great on pumpernickel or the classic rye (which both make me think of many trips to Jewish delis with my father and not anything remotely Irish). I like mine with plenty of mustard but you could easily add sauerkraut and make it into a Reuben. 

Look for the Chocolate Guinness Pudding recipe tomorrow!

Recipe from Hell Yeah It's Vegan.

Lenten Fasting

Every year for as long as I can remember, I have given something up for Lent. I know that in some families, people are encouraged to do something nice for others during the Lenten fast but I grew up Catholic and in my house it was always meant to be a time of sacrifice.

Last year for Lent I had the bright idea to give up coffee and the forty-six days were an absolute slice of Hell. The thing about my love affair with the legal, addictive stimulant is that I really truly am an addict. If there were a Coffee Anonymous I would likely be there every week, politely standing in front of a circle of peers saying, "Hello, my name is Valerie and I am addicted to coffee," only to leave the meeting and be found later at Starbucks hiding in a corner with a nonfat late.

Seriously, though, I feel the way about coffee that many feel about cigarettes:  I like to hold a cup of coffee, I like the way it feels in my hands. I enjoy the way it smells and the way it tastes. I feel confident when I have a cup of coffee and I feel like it makes me look cooler to others, as if they will respect me more when I am around my very close, personal friend, Mr. Java.

Last year, as I said, was not pleasant. By about the third day of Lent I had nearly set the house on fire.

I had on my stove top at the time those metal covers for each burner. One morning I woke to make my morning cup of tea, which I was trying to use as sad substitute for my morning coffee. I removed one burner cover, filled my kettle with water, turned on the stove and left the room to wash my face and brush my teeth in hopes of waking up a bit.

When, moments later, I still did not hear the sound of the whistling kettle I returned to the kitchen to find that, in my decaffeinated haze, I had turned on the wrong burner. What had been a darling little burner cover was now a serious hazard. 

The painted metal cover was aflame wafting God-only-knows what toxins into the air and shooting flames like a small dragon. It was all I could do to grab a frying pan lid and smother the flames. Had I been more alert at the time I might also have screamed and freaked out like the girl that I am but, as I say, I was in a caffeine-free coma. I will say, however, that putting out a small kitchen fire is the best method I have found yet in order to wake you up in the morning.

I have since discarded the three surviving burner covers and this year I have opted to give up something a little less risky: cheese. While the past few weeks without fromage have not been a picnic, they have also been significantly less eventful.

Even though I can't eat cheese for the next thirteen days, I can still share some of my very-most-favorite cheese recipes. And I think that is exactly what I shall do, starting tomorrow, with my Fried Goat Cheese Salad.

What are your family's traditions surrounding Lent? Do you participate in a Lenten fast? Leave a comment below or send an e-mail to rn6productions@gmail.com.

Valerie's Vernacular

Before we do anything, let me first clarify one term in particular that I will undoubtedly use as I blog:

how much you like it.

This is something that my great-grandmother used to say and it is a term that has stuck in our family generations after she coined it. I suppose it is similar to what some people mean by a "pinch" or a "dash." But in my family it is always how much you like it.

Family legend holds that my great-grandmother left Poland on the last boat out in 1914 before WWI. The only thing that kept her alive on the boat over were bananas, which she ate peel-on. In the poor village she came from, she had never seen a banana and didn't know that she was supposed to peel it. I can't imagine she much enjoyed them...but I digress.

For my great-grandmother, English was something like her third or fourth language, so it left a little to be desired.  Her cooking though - that was something else.

Like many home cooks, my great-grandmother cooked by sight, smell, and taste, not by recipe. This method of cooking led her to coin the term how much you like it.

Whenever she was asked how much of any ingredient to use, her answer was always the same: 

how much you like it. 

Cooking in this manner means that you can cook without a recipe. You can use whatever you have on hand or you can modify a recipe based on your own preferences.

I make this point so that you understand that I will post a lot of recipes and I fully intend two things:

I will use this term whenever I plan to modify a recipe or when I simply do not follow a recipe at all;

I expect that you will further modify my recipes by varying the amounts of each ingredient.

I hope you'll feel as comfortable using the term as you do modifying recipes.

Happy eating!

Say Cheeeeeeese!

My father is nearly impossible to shop for.

My entire lifetime he has returned nearly every gift I can recall anyone ever giving him.

I usually err on the side of caution and choose one of three strategies:

1. Make him a gift - he can't return those;

2. Buy him exactly what he has asked for, with absolutely no variances;
3. Get him a gift card.

Dad is a contradiction: he is, at the same time, minimalist and extremely high maintenance. God love him.

This year for Christmas his entire list was:
"Raising Sand" by Robert Plant and Alison Krauss and a wallet.

I should specify his request for a wallet: Dadso wanted a black, leather wallet with little to no stitching and absolutely NO ornamentation. Also, he only wanted it to be able to hold three cards on each side AND it had to have a "little plastic thingy" in the center for his license. He even went so far as to measure his old wallet so that I would be sure to get the dimensions right.

I knew going into this that the wallet would be a chalenge but, what I did not know, was that "Raising Sand" has been atop the best seller list for months, meaning that it is next to impossible to find anywhere. Three towns/malls and about five stores later, I finally found the CD on Christmas Eve.

I think the worst part, for me, is that he gave me these very specific requests only a week and a half before Christmas. Aside from Dadso, I had been finished shopping (and wrapped, I might add) since the day after Thanksgiving. This is, to me, incredibly frustrating. It was beginning to look like I was going to have to choose option #3, when a coworker gave me a great idea!

Vintner's Cellar Winery, a new-ish, local establishment has a program called "Adopt a Batch" whereby you adopt a batch of wine. You get about 30 bottles of whichever particular varietal you desire and then, for only $5.00 each, you can have as many custom wine lables created as you like.

I was lucky enough to get in on someone else's order so that I didn't end up with 30 bottles of chianti but I did get a great, really creative, custom gift that even my dadso loved!

I e-mailed the nice folks at Vintner's Cellar three photos of me and dad when I was just a peanut:

Do you love the '70s couch?

The folks at the store liked the third one, and this is what the finished label looks like:

Aren't we cute?

Happy Birthday to ME!

Today is my 27th birthday...and every birthday I can remember, my mother has woken me up with a cupcake (just one candle) and has sung "Happy Birthday" to me.

I love this family tradition and I fully intend to use it when I have children of my own. :)