DUMMERSTON — Savory roast seitan and gravy is an easy dish to prepare and can be the centerpiece of a vegan holiday meal. (I usually just call it “roast gluten,” but I didn't want to scare anyone off from trying it.)
I should mention that I like to spread out the process of making these dishes over a few days. The gravy, stuffing, onions, and gluten can all be made a day or two ahead and stored to reheat on the holiday.
For those of us who can eat and enjoy seitan or gluten, we actually enjoy this dish. It does have a spongy texture, which some people find unpleasant, but, on the other hand, it is fun to cut something up with a carving knife that hasn't suffered for your eating pleasure, and it is nice and chewy.
Gluten is the protein part of the wheat berry, that which is left over if you wash all the starch from whole wheat flour after mixing it with water and kneading it for a while into a dough ball.
You can do that if you want, but it's a lot easier to just buy some vital wheat gluten powder, available at natural food stores.
Seitan is a seasoned cooked substance made from gluten, which is available in the freezer or refrigerated sections of your natural food store. The plain gluten dough ball is usually cooked in a seasoned broth for an hour or so to make it the traditional way, but I find it easier to do it my own way at home, which is probably cheaper, too.
Preheat your oven to 350 degrees.
Dump about two cups of the gluten into a mixing bowl and stir in the following seasonings:
¶2 tablespoons nutritional yeast flakes
¶½ teaspoon garlic powder
¶¼ teaspoon ginger powder
¶a sprinkle of cumin seeds
¶a dash of red pepper
You can use a little more of any of those, if you'd like.
Add {1/8} cup of tamari soy sauce to 1½ cups of water and pour that into the dry mixture.
Mix with a fork, cleaning the sides of the bowl with the springy, spongy ball that will form. If there is any leftover dry mix, then just add a little more water.
Oil a rectangular glass baking dish, or whatever you have for baking casseroles. Press and flatten the dough ball into an irregular, approximately ½-inch-thick shape as best you can.
Mix another {1/8} cup of tamari with 1½ cups of water. Pour this mixture over the dough ball so it is sitting in a bath.
I like to add several peeled cloves of garlic to the water, and you should, if you like garlic.
At this point you can just bake it for an hour, at which point it will be ready to slice and eat. The gluten will absorb the liquid and form a crust on top.
You can also use the seitan instead of meat in recipes like stews, soups, or fajitas, and it is especially good the next day, fried in slices and used to make sandwiches.
If you want to make more of a complete dinner, you can add cut-up potatoes around the gluten before you cook it. Then, with the addition of some cooked greens, your meal is almost ready.
At Thanksgiving I double the recipe of roast gluten and cook it the day ahead for an hour in a larger rectangular baking dish.
After it cools a bit, I loosen it from its baking dish. In the morning of the feast, I mold my stuffing in the cleaned, oiled dish so that it doesn't stick, and I lay the slab of gluten over it, surrounding it with more stuffing.
I baste the mound of gluten that's protruding with a little olive oil and lemon, and I bake it for another 30 minutes, or until it is cooked through.
Gravy
Gravy is nice to have on hand for the potatoes and gluten roast.
I like to make my gravy with garbanzo flour, which is made from chick peas. It has a yummy piquancy and rich flavor that enhances the mashed potatoes.
You might be able to find garbanzo flour where gluten-free baking products are sold. I have seen this product from Bob's Red Mill in the natural food section in my supermarket, but you could also use another kind of flour; it just won't be as rich flavored. I have tried it with some sorghum flour I had on hand, but I still prefer the garbanzo.
Using a cast-iron frying pan, brown ½ cup of garbanzo flour in ¼ cup of olive oil until it smells nutty. I use a cast iron pan for this. Don't let the garbanzo flour get too browned. Cool.
Boil approximately 2 cups of water.
Add 1 tablespoon of tamari, 1 teaspoon of nutritional yeast, and gradually add some of the hot water to the browned garbanzo flour, stirring it in very gradually with a whisk or fork. Keep adding the hot water, up to 1½ cups.
The hot water and the gradual adding of the water, along with the cooling of the garbanzo/oil mixture first, help keep your gravy from getting lumpy: that is the goal. Good luck!
As it thickens, add more water, then add a pinch of basil. When your mixture seems creamy and gravy-like, turn off the heat and add about ½ of a lemon's juice, about 2 tablespoons.
Potatoes
One night when I made my roast gluten, I surrounded it with the cut potatoes (I like Yukon gold) and baked a halved but not peeled buttercup squash (the flattened orb of a dark green squash, not butternut squash) with its seeds removed and placed face down on a cookie sheet along with a peeled golden beet, some carrots, peeled onions and garlic, and a garnet yam with the skin on.
I sprinkled the peeled vegetables with olive oil and a little salt. I baked them while the oven was preheating, as well as while the gluten was roasting, until a fork found them to be soft.
I made the gravy and steamed some collards for about 15 minutes, until they were still bright green, but softened. (You don't have to cook the life out of them.)
There was quite a feast that night, and the next night I just cut up and then heated the vegetables and gluten along with the gravy for leftovers, which you can get away with, if nobody complains.
Stuffing
Here is my stuffing: Sauté a large, chopped sweet onion in olive oil, along with 3 stalks of chopped celery and 10 or more chopped white mushrooms.
Tear up a loaf of bread. The month or two before, you can save all the ends in the freezer that nobody wants for sandwiches, and use that if you'd like. That's what my son did this year, and it seemed like a good use of the crusts.
When I was little, I used to like the job of digging into the whole loaves the supermarket used to sell (unsliced) for stuffing. I would dig in from one end and create a tunnel, and then move on from there.
In any case, you should end up with a large bowl full of 1-inch pieces of bread.
Add the sautéed vegetables to the bread and add one tablespoon of rubbed sage, two chopped apples, ½ cup of chopped walnuts, pecans, or chestnuts, and ½ cup of apple cider or onion broth from cooking the vegan creamed onions (recipe follows).
Vegan creamed onions
To make vegan creamed onions, peel some small white boiling onions or pearl onions. To peel them more easily, you can submerge them in boiling water for a few minutes, then run cold water over them, slicing off the two ends and sliding them out of their skins.
Next, simmer the onions until they are soft in a stock of half water and half white wine, seasoned with sea salt, pepper, and parsley. Drink any remaining wine. Reserve ½ cup of the stock for the stuffing.
Make a white sauce by mixing 3 tablespoons each of tahini and arrowroot powder in a small cup, then adding a little of the stock to it. Next, add this slurry to the onions and stock, then stir until it thickens. (This step should not take long at all.)
You will have a nice white sauce with little, round onions sticking out. I make the creamed onions the day before, pouring them into a decorative baking dish to reheat.
Vegan mashed potatoes
To make vegan mashed potatoes, just cook cut up a bunch of potatoes and mash them up with a potato masher while they are still hot, along with some plain soy milk, some tamari, and nutritional yeast to taste, and a few globs of Organic Earth or Smart Balance margarine, which is non-hydrogenated. (I leave the skins on, but you can do what you like.)
Another colorful addition to the table is the carrot/turnip mash, which my family has used for years. Just cut up carrots and peeled turnips, cook until soft, and mash them together. The sweet carrots balance out the stronger-flavored turnips.
I like to cook up some greens to go along with all of this, as they add a nice balancing color and some good minerals.
Oh! And for a cranberry relish, I just cook 2 cups of organic cranberries and ¼ cup of raisins with ½ cup of apple juice or cider.
When the cranberries have popped and softened, add 1 tablespoon of minced organic orange rind and chill until you need it.
Any leftovers can be used instead of jam on peanut butter sandwiches the next week.
Vegan pumpkin pie
Pumpkin pie is certainly necessary for Thanksgiving. I've made this vegan version for years, and nobody complains that it isn't as good as other non-vegan versions; I'd like to think it is better.
For many years, I've actually made this pie with buttercup squash, a squat, green skinned, orange-fleshed variety with a rich flavor. However, one of my sons thinks he doesn't like squash, but he will eat vegan pumpkin pie (a much friendlier name), and another son simply insists that pumpkin pie should be made with pumpkin.
So this year, we bought an organic pie pumpkin, which is smaller and sweeter than the big ones. I washed it and cut it horizontally through the middle, discarded the seeds (somewhat guiltily, because they can be roasted and eaten, but I don't like them much), and then placed the two halves cut-side down on a cookie sheet to bake for 1 hour at 350 degrees.
After that hour, I took the pumpkin out of the oven after leaving it in the oven for another hour in there without the heat on, and the skin peeled away easily.
You could use a can of pumpkin, but I like to cook up some squash or pumpkin for a fresher taste.
¶2 pie shells in regular pie plates (not deep dish)
¶1 cooked small pumpkin or other squash (which can also be peeled and cooked in some water on the stove top) to yield 3¼ cups mashed pumpkin (or an equivalent amount of canned pumpkin purée)
¶2 cups soy, rice, or nut milk
¶¼ cup arrowroot powder or corn starch
¶¼ cup almond or peanut butter (Though this isn't essential, it makes for a richer tasting pie.)
¶½ cup maple syrup
¶½ cup Sucanat or other organic sugar
¶1½ tablespoon molasses
¶1 tablespoon vanilla
¶1 tablespoon cinnamon
¶½ teaspoon salt
¶1 dash allspice and/or clove
Preheat oven to 450 degrees. Blend the pumpkin and the other ingredients and pour into the pie shells.
Bake at 450 degrees for 15 minutes, lower heat to 350 degrees, and bake for another 30 minutes.
The filling might jiggle when you remove it from the oven, but it will set nicely as it cools.
Walnut cream
Vegan pumpkin pie can be served with tofu whipped topping - or you could use walnut cream.
In a blender, mix:
¶1 cup of walnuts
¶¼ cup of water
¶¼ cup of maple syrup
¶1 teaspoon of vanilla
¶{1/8} cup of rum
¶1 big spoonful of hazelnut butter or organic Smart Balance margarine
Dab the walnut cream on your cooled pie.