Thursday, June 3, 2010

Insert seitan pun here

After discovering the veg*n for dinner blog a few weeks ago, I've been wanting to try out her recipe for seitan filet mignon. Last night I managed to gather all the necessary ingredients, thanks to radical grocery, after a week or so of scouring local supermarkets for gluten flour with no luck. I replaced the corn meal with polenta (U.S.A. foods apparently stocks it, but I wasn't willing to go all the way to Moorabin for it).

This was my second attempt at making seitan. Several years ago I used a recipe from 'La Dolce Vegan' that turned out quite rubbery. This recipe had pictures included so I would know if something was going wrong. At the the stage just before boiling, my seitan didn't resemble the picture and looked a bit brittle. A small amount came off whilst cooking and turning it over, but they ended up quite solid in the end.

Just out of the pot

I ate some straight away and was pleased, but there was a slightly overpowering herbiness to it. I chucked them in the fridge overnight and had some today with steak sauce (with a side of sprouted chickpeas) and they tasted even better with a much meatier texture. Only dissapointment is that it didn't look much like the pics from the original recipe.
Overall, the recipe is a bit time consuming but I will definitely make it again.

VEGAN PSA

Had lunch in the city today at the food court near the corner of King and Collins st. Found a place called 'Simply Indian' and all their vegetarian curries were vegan and the guy knew what he was talking about as I asked him if there was butter in the curry and he said, "We don't use butter, ghee or flour in our curries. All the vegetable curries are vegan." So I told him to give me all of them. 3 curries and rice for $9.95. Pretty good value. I had the spinach and tofu, chickpea and potato and cauliflower curries. Solid meal.


$9.95 worth of deliciousness

Simply Indian
Shp4g/ 546 Collins St, Melbourne

4 comments:

  1. I normally just use cornflour with cornmeal, I think it's just a US-Australian term thing or one is finer.

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  2. Ooh, thanks for the PSA! Love it when restaurants already know what you're talking about!

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  3. @Kristy - Yeah, my 5 minutes of research told me that cornmeal is just corn more finely ground than polenta. However, I have always thought corn flour was something more refined than just ground up corn. According to wikipedia it could mean 4 different things depending on the country. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cornflour

    @Miss T - No problem. The guy also had awesome facial hair :)

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