beouf bourguingon

At the risk of being very clichéd (ooh, French word), I’m going to ask… have you seen Julie and Julia?

If you haven’t, as a food blog reader, you should. If you have, you’ll know that Beouf Bourguingon has become the dish that all food-bloggers must cook and write about, and so you’ll understand my trepidation when it came to turning seitan and fake bacon into something rich, satisfying, and melt-in-your-mouth Frenchish.

This dish usually requires long cooking on the stove and/or in the oven, which is something that seitan, in my experience, just doesn’t handle well. Also, its full of wine, which requires some tender negotiations at my place, as Mr hates the alcohol industry, and I have tried the non-alcoholic vegan stuff before – it only comes in sweet, which doesn’t work in dinner.

I was successful in my diplomatic mission, so it was on to conquer the seitan.

In my normal, scattered style, I read a bunch of recipes, got a feel for it, then started to cook, with some vegan adjustments. I will give you a recipe of sorts, but you’ll have to excuse the lack of measurements. I measure only when writing recipes, and even then, it feels like a bit of an imposition!

It ended up almost perfect. Gorgeous, rich, winey sauce, perfectly cooked vegies. Unfortunately, the seitan was a little rubbery, as I had feared. The recipe below reflects what I did, but if I make it again I would adjust it to use Fry’s Beef-style Strips instead of ordinary seitan, and I would add them close to the end to avoid the rubber-effect.

"Beef" Bourgingon and creamy celeric puree

You’ll need:

• Fake Bacon, diced
• A chunk of seitan, chopped, beef style (note, this may have been better with the Fry’s strips, and I suggest you try it).
• a bunch of tiny onions
• mushrooms, sliced thinly
• garlic, minced
• carrots
• celery
• about 1/4 cup flour
• a few tablespoons tomato sauce
• “beef” flavoured stock powder
• 2-3 cups red wine
• salt, pepper, dried thyme
• 4 bay leaves
• some fresh parsley

1. Brown the mushrooms in margarine, then set aside.
2. Brown the whole small onions in oil and stock, then set aside.
3. In a large saucepan, cook the bacon in some oil, set aside, leaving oil.
4. In the same pan, cook the garlic for 5 minutes. Add the carrots and celery, and cook over medium heat for 10 minutes.
5. At the same time, bring the wine to a boil in a small saucepan. Boil for 5 minutes.
6. Remove the  vegies from the saucepan. Coat with flower, then return to pan and fry until lightly browned. Stir occasionally, but don’t get too concerned about them sticking at this point.
7. Add the wine, bay leaves and stock powder (dissolved in water) at this point. Bring to the boil, then lower heat to simmer for 45 minutes.
8. Add the seitan, mushrooms, thyme, onions, and tomato paste. Continue to cook for another 30 minutes, stirring occasionally.
9. Remove the bay leaves. Leave on low or no heat until ready to serve.
10. Just before serving, add the parsley and bacon.

We had it with a e celeraic and potato puree: Boil diced celeraic and diced potato until they’re beginning to fall apart. Mash with soy milk, vegan cream cheese, chicken-flavoured stock powder, salt, pepper, margarine and nutritional yeast. Its rich and fatty, and really pretty fabulous.

Yum.

Teppanyaki and stuff

The plan was to make sushi, but when I wandered into the kitchen I was so sleepy and generally out of sorts that fiddly food was out of the question. Instead, I decided to make something teppanyaki-ish, with some vegies and noodles.

I have fond memories of real teppanyaki, which I first encountered at a friend’s birthday when I was 13 (?, maybe 14?). It was awesome. Good food, primarily made up of former creatures, cooked in front of you and then thrown at you. This wasn’t like that.

I used a recipe from the Australian Women’s Weekly (from now on shortened to AWW) Cooking Class Japanese for both the teppanyaki and the simmered green beans.

I subbed tofu and vegetarian Luck Chunks (from Global Green) for the prawns, chicken and beef the recipe called for. These were soaked in soy sauce, garlic, chilli and brown sugar, cooked, and served with a dipping sauce of soy, mirin, sugar, ginger ad sesame oil.

Teppanyaki is supposed to be cooked on a grill, near or at the table, and eaten immediately, in batches. Like most people I know, however, I don’t own a grill, I don’t have space for a BBQ, and (unlike most people) I don’t actually own a table. So I cooked it in my wok, in one batch, like the culinary heretic I am. It turned out more like a stir-fry than a BBQ, but it was delicious and, thankfully, easy.

I have really very poor hand eye coordination (especially given I’m a personal trainer!), and was almost too tired to cook, let alone throw food at anyone, so to avoid having to clean tofu off the carpet we settled for meekly placing the food on our plates.

Tofu and Vegetarian Luck Chunks (Mock Beef)

Simmered green beans- simple and yum

The green beans were simmered in a light broth of vegetarian dashi, soy sauce and rice wine.

We ate them both with some chilled Cha Soba (green tea noodles) tossed with sesame oil, sake, sesame seeds and little bits of nori.

Cha Soba - not a very good picture

This was a very simple and filling meal, which was exactly what we were in need of after a long day. Yum!

“Romantic” fried chicken dinner and the best apple pie ever

When I think of a romantic dinner, I think candles, wine, maybe some music. Fried chicken and tv doesn’t usually come to mind. But that’s what we went with on Friday night, and it didn’t turn out half bad.

Candles = Romantic (also, flash=bad photo of candles)

I was already making the seitan (yeah, i totally made seitan) when Mr called sounding very tired. We decided to stay in and have a quiet night together, which to be fair, takes hardly any discussion, as it’s what we usually do.

Non-alcoholic, fizzy, sweet "wine"

Mr sounded like he needed a pick-me-up, so I decided to try to make it a little more romantic than usual. Also, I was avoiding doing an assessment. So while the seitan was setting, I went to the shops and bought some “wine”, and got a copy of a “romantic” dvd from the library. Ok, I got carbonated non-alcoholic dark grape beverage and Season 4 of the West Wing, but you get the idea. Oh, and we don’t drink, so don’t own wine glasses, so the “wine” was served in ordinary glasses. Class? We haz it.

For eats, I had already decided Friday would be the time to try a very American meal of fried chicken, vegies and apple pie.

Simmering Seitan

I used the recipe from Vegan YumYum to make the seitan. I didn’t make any tweaks, but the reader should beware that I ended up with enough seitan to fee about 6 people, not just 2.

The recipe says that you have to be careful not to boil it, as it may turn out rubbery. I avoided boiling, but may have had the temperature down to low, as it turned out a little soft. Mr loved it, but I found the texture a bit creepy.

Dinner

We had it with roasted potatoes, greens and white beans, and steamed carrots. We have everything with carrot at the moment, because we just evicted a crop from our garden to make room for beans.

For dessert, I made apple pie. I used this recipe as inspiration, and it turned out wonderfully. Crisp, flaky pastry, no burned edges, yummy not-too-sweet apple filling.

I substituted the 6 tbs each of butter and shortening that the recipe called for with 8 tbs of Nuttelex lite and and 4 tbs of canola oil, which seemed to do the trick. The secret is keeping everything very cold, which isn’t too hard in our chilly kitchen at the moment.

We had it with some packet-mix custard. I could go on and on about it, it was seriously delicious!

A slice of Pie

Disaster strikes, but turns out yum

The aim for last night was to attempt the Traditional Pancake Rolls, or Milssam, and Pumpkin porridge, with Persimmon Tea, Persimmon sherbet, and Barbequed beef. I had made a plan, I had all the ingredients, I had a clean kitchen to start with and I was in my element- this was going to be good.

I started with the Persimmon Sherbet, or Yeonci. Re-reading the recipe, I realised I didn’t have the required freezing horsepower to turn a whole persimmon into ice before dinner, so instead I peeled and belnded it, and stuck it in the freezer in a plastic container.

I then moved to the tea, and realised that I had again mis-read the recipe and had bought fresh rather than dried persimmon… ah well, how different can it be, right? So on with the tea, fresh chopped persimmons and all. At least I got to throw in some of my newly-procured jujubes.

I then moved on to the seasoning the beef-flavoured seitan and some tempeh to make the barbecued beef. No worries here, at least. I cooked the pumpkin for the porridge, again, no issues. For the pancake rolls, I managed to get the vegetables julliened without a hitch.. things are beginning to go well. I made the batter, no worries there, and then preceeded to heat the wok.

I poured in the stated amount of batter, fried the pancake, began to lift it and bam! pancake crumbles. That’s ok, I say to myself, the first one never works out, we’ll try again. So I pour in the next spoonful, fry one side, lift it up… and no joy. It tears, it crumbles, it falls apart. Okay, third time’s the charm right? Wrong. The third one was the worst. It wouldn’t swirl, it got all thick in the middle, and then it just stuck to the bottom of the pan and no amount of coaxing would get it off.

So I left off for a while, stuck the evidence in the compost, and fried up the ‘beef’. I, rather nervously as I just couldn’t imagine it working, added the rice flour to the pumpkin mixture. Inspiration struck, and I wrapped the intended pancake filling in some rice paper rolls, and served the lot with some rice noodles. Mr made the mustard lemon sauce, being drawn to the kitchen by the sounds of and impending tantrum.

We ate the lot with the persimmon tea (which was wonderful), and followed it up with the pureed frozen persimmon and some vanilla soy ice-cream.

In the end all was well. I loved the ‘beef’, and the rice-paper-cum-pancake rolls were great, especially with the lemon mustard sauce. The pumpkin porridge, which I had been suspicious of from the start, was fantastic- much better than either of us imagined. My noodles (I made them up on the night) were a good fit with the other flavours, and Mr loved the persimmon sherbet. Me, not so much, I didn’t like the flavour of the persimmon, but otherwise it was yum.

So, without further ado, I have some photos, and my recipe for fresh-flavoured noodles to go with the tempeh and seitan.

Dinner on the box table

Tempeh, seitan and noodles

Surprisingly yummy pumpkin porridge

Yummy mustard sauce in my favourite tea cup, and rice paper rolls

Persimmon Tea - so good

Sweet Noodles

1 packet glass noodles

4 tbs chopped corriander

1 nashi pear, diced (small)

2 tbsp soy sauce

2 tbs raw sugar

2 tbs lime juice

3 tbsp sesame seeds

Cook the noodles in some water, as per packet instructions, drain and set aside.

Chop the pear and corriander.

Add the rest of ingredients to a large frying pan, add noodles and stir until completely mixed. Serve warm.