Simple Seitan

If you are a vegetarian in Melbourne, you must be intimately familiar with vegan parmigiana at the East Brunswick Club. It used to be a Monday night ritual - Monday night parmas with beer and friends. Afterwards it feels like I have a brick nestling in my stomach, but I don't care. They are that delicious. Anyway I am 96% sure these faux-schnitzels are made from seitan, so when I saw the recipe in Veganomicon I knew it would be one of my first projects.


First I was tasked with finding vital wheat gluten, seitan's primary ingredient. I discovered some Gluten Flour on the shelves of the local health food store. A quick google had 6 people saying it was the same thing as vital wheat gluten, and 1 naysayer. I decided to trust the majority. Fortuitously, the same shop also sold nutritional yeast (under the moniker of Savoury Yeast Flakes).

Once home, I mixed the yeast and gluten with tamari, vegetable broth, oil and garlic. I wont lie, it looked like grey spongy dog poo and smelled as bad. Witness..



The recipe then calls for boiling the dough in broth. Apparently one must be quick to catch the boil and reduce heat to a gentle simmer. Since I have an electric stove that takes forever to cool down I had to be on guard. They say a watched pot never boils. It does, it's just really, really boring. I then had an hour to kill while the concoction simmered. I chose to watch Coco Avant Chanel and paint my nails. I learned its really dumb to perform a task that requires you to look away from the screen for extended periods when the film has sub-titles. I will need to re-watch the dvd at some point in the future to work out what the hell was going on.
By now my seitan is ready and it looks.. like slightly firmer grey spongy dog poo. Appetising right? Who knows how it tastes, but at least I have a pound of seitan to use in one of the many Veganomicon recipes that calls for it!




Until I can fix my digital camera, you are stuck with lousy iPhone snaps. No food porn for you!