Skip to main content

Make your own vegan meat


It is quite satisfying to make fake meat, meat eaters will not understand this, but they should try too, when the fridge is empty and you have little time. No hunting, killing, butchering … cheap and so versatile for many dishes. All you need is some gluten flour, and the flavouring of your choice. 

This is also called seitan and can be made in many different ways, but I find that the easier for me is to mix one cup of gluten flour with one cup of water. To the gluten flour you can add salt and pepper, herbs, seasoning… smoked salt or paprika, garlic flakes, dried sage and rosemary… anything really. Then you mix everything with your fingers and then work into a dough. Once the dough is ready shape it into a sausages and with a pair of scissor cut into very thin slices directly into a pot of boiling vegetable stock and simmer for 30 minutes (it will grow and absorb more flavour). For this dish I drained the fake meat slices and then pan fried them with a little oil to brown them, then I added soy sauce and lemon juice. In a separate pot I sautéed some green beans and then added a bit of the leftover stock and simmer them for a few minutes to absorb the liquid, then I added the fake meat and some chopped up onion weed cubs and stalks (reserve the flowers for the end). A final touch with a bit more soy sauce and lemon juice to taste, then I turned the heat off, added the flowers and served everything on top of rice. 

 Photos and Recipes by Alessandra Zecchini ©

Comments

  1. Ciao cara, adoro il seitan, lo faccio spesso!!!
    Tanti auguri di buon anno anche a te.
    Un abbraccio

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

How to make Rose Turkish Delights (Lokum), and Sweet New Zealand

Rose Turkish Delights (Lokum) Before I start I would like to say that I don't have a sugar thermometer, essential if you are really into confectionery, and that I didn't use much sugar for these Turkish delights. Many recipes use much more sugar, and it is not that I wanted to make a low sugar treat here (it is still pretty sweet), it is just that making it at home really makes me realize how much sugar there is already in my diet, and if I can have something with a little less... well, why not! This method is 'home friendly' i.e. these can be made at home with very little effort and equipment, and the recipe comes from my book  Sweet As...  where I also have the recipe for lavender and orange blossom Turkish Delights. Ingredients 1 l water 300 g sugar 2 tbsp lemon juice 100 g cornflour 1 tbsp frozen raspberries 1 tbsp rose water icing sugar (very little) and cornflour (lots) to dust. In a pot put hal...

Silver beet Paneer, a variation of Palak Paneer

The other day I showed you my curry made with borage , ‘invented’ because I have tons of it in the garden! The other green-leaf crop that does well in Auckland is silver beet. My old plants (from last year!) got so tall that I started collecting only the little leaves from the stalks, and they look like spinach. One of my favourite Indian dishes is Palak Paneer (or Panir), spinach with panir cottage cheese, and this variation is made using my silver beet. I washed (many times!) the small silver beet leaves, and then I steamed them and drain them. In a heavy pot I heated 2 tbsp of vegetable oil (I used rice bran oil) and sautéed for 30 seconds: 1/2 tsp ground cumin 1/2 tsp ground coriander 1 tsp turmeric 1/3 tsp ground chili then I added 2 roughly chopped shallots and, after 3 minutes, a good pinch of salt and the cooked silver beet. I cooked everything on low for about 20 minutes (you may need to add just a little water if the silver beet is too dry) and then finely pureed the content ...

Crema Bruciata, or Crème brûlée, with nectarines, plums and cherries

The original recipes comes from my book Sweet As... ,  my own recipe which doesn't require steam baking in the oven and includes nectarine slices. Plum slices and cherries were also added here, and the result was delicious!  In Italy we also call this  crema bruciata , but  crème brûlée  is most commonly used now as it sounds sophisticated :-). To make the crème you will need one egg yolk for each 100ml of cream and 1 tbsp of sugar, for this recipes I used 5 egg yolks (thus 500ml cream and 5 tbsp of sugar) and I filled 8 ramekins, plus I had a little left to fill three miniature ones. Of course if you don't put any fruit on the bottom you will need more crème. It is up to you how much fruit you put in, generally I just line the bottom of the ramekins with 4-5 think slices, this time I think I overdid it (thus the leftover crème) sicne stone fruit season is not long in NZ, and I wanted to use more fruit than crème! Don't use watery fruit and remo...