Kali's Seitan Sausages

This is a recipe I made up all by myself, so I'm quite proud, and will cry if anyone copies it without credit and linkage.

Ingredients
(Makes 8)

• 1 400ml Tin of Cannellini Beans
• 2 Medium Mushrooms
• 1 Tablespoon Olive Oil
• 1 Tablespoon Soy Sauce
• 1 Tablespoon Tomato Puree
• 1 Tablespoon Garlic Puree
• 1/2 Tablespoon Onion Salt
• Other Seasonings; All Spice, Mace, Cumin, Pepper, Chilli Powder.  A dash of each.
• 200ml Vegetable Stock (I used one Oxo vegetarian stock cube)
• 1 1/2 Cups Vital Wheat Gluten

1. Put everything except the Vital Wheat Gluten into a blender, and blend till smooth.  Taste, and add more seasoning if necessary.
2. Mix with the Vital Wheat Gluten to form a dough.  Scoop out quarter cupfuls of dough, form into sausages, and wrap in tinfoil.
3. Steam for forty minutes.  You can do this in a vegetable steamer (which is all I have, to be honest), just swap the layers around halfway through.  The seitan will swell, and press against the foil.
4. Unwrap from the tinfoil, and allow to cool and dry out slightly.  The seitan is cooked, and can be eaten as is, but can also be cooked further - for instance, grill it, and put it on a bun.

I love this recipe, and not just because I invented it.  The sausages are low-fat, and good to snack on and make sandwiches with (which I do often, because they're very high in protein).  I baked some of the last batch into bread rolls, like bagel dogs.

I'd never heard of bagel dogs before I started reading Fed Up With Lunch, but Mrs Q was given some a couple of times.  She seemed to assume that everyone knew what they were, so didn't include an explanation.  I gather that they're sausages baked into bread, which seemed like a good idea to me, if the bread and sausages were homemade and delicious.  So I made some for that picnic Anthony and I had.  They were yummy, and so filling.

With this batch, I'm going to make pork pies.  I've never done that, even as an omnivore, so it'll be a fun experiment.  I'm planning an English themed picnic for the Royal Wedding Day, and pork pies seem quintessentially English to me.

I'm not an ardent Royalist.  I wish William and Kate well, but I'm not particularly interested in them.  I just love British food, and themed picnics - it means I challenge myself more to come up with interesting foods.

I could also make some sausage rolls.  That'd be fun.

According to MFPs recipe calculator, each of these sausages contains 143 calories, 10g of carbs, 20g of protein, 3g of fat, and 1g of sugar.

Hail Seitan

...because I had to use that title, at least once.

Seitan is 'wheat meat' a kind of fake meat made from nutritional yeast and mashed beans, usually, with various other flavourings and ingredients to get slightly different textures and tastes.

Incidentally, I am very sick of omnivores being puzzled about why veg*ns make fake meats. I didn't give up meat because I didn't like the taste, all right?

Anyway; this recipe is adapted from one on Vegan Dad's blog, which he adapted from Isa.

Ingredients

1/2 Cup Cannellini Beans (rinsed and drained)
1 Vegetable Stock Cube, dissolved in one cup of water (I am lazy)
1 Tbsp Olive Oil
1 Tbsp Soy Sauce
2 Cloves of Garlic, grated or finely chopped
1 1/4 Cups Vital Wheat Gluten (I ordered mine from here a while back)
1/4 Cup Nutritional Yeast
Seasonings - I used Sage, Oregano, Parsley, Paprika, and Onion Salt.

1.  First, drain the cannellini beans, and put half a cup of them into a mixing bowl (incidentally, half a cup is about half a tin - I suggest using adding the rest to baked beans, to make them super proteiny).  Mash them until no whole ones are left.  I used a potato masher.

2. Add the vegetable stock. You could use homemade vegetable stock, but I haven't gotten around to making any of that yet. The vegan stock cubes I've found are incredibly salty, which is why I halved the soy sauce from Vegan Dad's recipe. That, and the addition of the onion salt.

3. Add the olive oil, soy sauce, and grated garlic. Mix together with a fork, and add the nutritional yeast.

Incidentally, grating garlic is a bit of a pain, so feel free to use garlic puree.

Photographing yourself grating garlic is even more of a pain.

4. Add in the vital wheat gluten, and stir until it forms a dough. This dough should be firm, and not really sticky.

5.  Finally, add the seasonings. I used, as I mentioned above, onion salt, paprika, oregano, parsley, and sage, but it's up to you.

6.  Once the dough is completely mixed, separate and wrap in tin foil.  I made five fauxages, and two patties, since I wanted to try this seitan as a burger.  Steam for forty minutes.

If you only have a vegetable steamer, like I do, swap the layers around halfway through.

The fauxages can be eaten as they are after steaming, but you can also cook them further - grill or fry them crispy, for instance, or add to other recipes. They're pretty good all by themselves, though. I'm planning to use them as part of my full English project.