Veganuary

[Deaf Nobby Burton]

Got some vegan cookbooks last Christmas (2019) with the intention of making seitan, specifically sausages, but still haven’t got round to it. I think I tried during the first lockdown and couldn’t get the ingredients.

[Sasperella]

7 hours ago, sirjonnyp said:

Big ups to the seitan crew, never thought to look on facebook recipes. Been making my own for about two years now. It's so much better than tofu, jackfuit, banana blossom etc in everyway and so much more versatile. I've got my method down to two different recipes, depending on what I'm making now. One is a tad softer and is good for fried chicken and steak pies, the other is denser and good for roast joints and stir fry. My partner is particularly addicted to the greek-style lamb roast I do. 

Despite Melbourne being the supposed vegan capital of Australia, I have only ever found one shop selling VWG, and even that stopped selling it around April. Have to order in bulk online now. 

I was alone for christmas, so put a bit of effort into my dinner for one. Decided to make a stuffing and put it inside a chicken-style bit of seitan. Came out amazing. The photo may not look much and the chicken is the wrong colour, but it was 10/10, need to eat again. I have about a quarter of a jar of bisto onion gravy left from my last time in the UK that I now save for special occasions - it was gorgeous. 

I'm sorry, you make your own seitan? What? How? I must know!

[gmb1992]

3 minutes ago, Sasperella said:

I'm sorry, you make your own seitan? What? How? I must know!

There are a fair few recipes online, my fav is https://www.thebuddhistchef.com/recipe/seitan/. Some of the ones I have tried before have turned out to be what can only be described as "chicken bread", you can also change up the herbs and spices to your taste.

I've been vegan for almost 4 years after being veggie for about 10 years ( I had a bit of a hiatus around the age of 18). I try not to have too many processed alternatives, but below is a list of my go to ones :

Richmond meat free sausages (weekend treat)/ Classic Linda McCartney's (weekday staple, better macros)

Bourneville chocolate (perfect for a reasonably priced vegan chocolate), also Bourneville now do chocolate fingers, also vegan. There are loads of more expensive ones that are made with oat milk etc which taste amazing but can easily cost a shed load if you have a sweet tooth like me

Galaxy vegan instant hot chocolate - This is a game changer for me (again sweet tooth)

Oatly/ Jörd oat milk - The closest to dairy milk especially for tea

Myprotein/ Misfits - vegan protein range for anyone who likes a protein shake/bar

Hopefully this is helpful, there is also a social media site called "accidentally vegan" which lets people know of the common things you'd come across and not realise they are actually vegan 🙂 

 

[gigpusher]

Here's the recipe I use as the basis for the seitan bacon. I experiment a bit with the marinade. 

https://www.sunnysidehanne.com/how-to-make-smokey-maple-seitan-bacon-vegan/

[sirjonnyp]

1 hour ago, Ted Dansons Wig said:

Can you give us a steer with the Sietan recipe? Many years making from gluten it but only ever really been successful with the "Chewy" version.  How you do the softer version? 

Cutting in besan flour softens it up a fair bit I think. For my chicken style, I have 1+1/4 cp VWG, 1/4 cup besan, herbs and spices, 2tbsp nutritional yeast, 1 cup water (or stock, but I find it too salty). The more you knead the dough, the tougher the seitan will come out the other side. Then it gets chopped up a bit and boiled in weak stock for an hour with some soy sauce and herbs. Key thing to note here is that it is unwrapped - I see a lot of recipes wrap at this stage, so that may be what softens it up a lot. Once it's out you can whack it in the oven for 20 minutes just to dry it out a bit, then do whatever you want with it. 

Personally I think this recipe is a bit on the spongy side at the moment, I haven't made it in a while. Might cut the besan flour out completely on the next go. For the lamb roast joint I don't use any besan, also don't wrap it but it has 90 minutes in the oven and comes out a lot tougher. I also have a pepperoni recipe that I've been playing around with for a few months that it is really dense, but I'm not settled on that one yet.

[sirjonnyp]

1 hour ago, Sasperella said:

I'm sorry, you make your own seitan? What? How? I must know!

Just popped the chicken-style method above, it's surprisingly easy once you know the different steps. As gmb noted, it can come out like 'chicken-bread', but there are so many ways you can toy with the recipe and method that it's fairly easy to get something realistic. Some recently ended up in a stir fry for Ms P's parents, with dad normally being quite the sceptic and he was amazed at how beef-like the finished product was. 

I got inspired to give seitan a go after having Temple of Seitan when they first opened. I haven't had any for 18 months now because Australia, but it's still the best substitute I've ever had. I would die a happy man if I could get mine that good. An honourable mention to the 'No Bull Burgers' at Iceland, too. We found that they were the best burgers available when capitalism realised it had a growing market to target circa 2017. Not sure if they still do them, but they were £2 for a two pack and miles better than the moving mountain burgers and all of the other more expensive ones that we tried.

Shout out to Naturli too, best vegan butter and the best mince available. Oddly Ms P and I got invited to their UK launch party at the Danish Embassy, where we were plied with champagne, burgers and goody bags full of free product to take home. It's crazy expensive here, so I don't get it unless there's a good offer on. 

[Ted Dansons Wig]

4 hours ago, sirjonnyp said:

Cutting in besan flour softens it up a fair bit I think. For my chicken style, I have 1+1/4 cp VWG, 1/4 cup besan, herbs and spices, 2tbsp nutritional yeast, 1 cup water (or stock, but I find it too salty). The more you knead the dough, the tougher the seitan will come out the other side. Then it gets chopped up a bit and boiled in weak stock for an hour with some soy sauce and herbs. Key thing to note here is that it is unwrapped - I see a lot of recipes wrap at this stage, so that may be what softens it up a lot. Once it's out you can whack it in the oven for 20 minutes just to dry it out a bit, then do whatever you want with it. 

Personally I think this recipe is a bit on the spongy side at the moment, I haven't made it in a while. Might cut the besan flour out completely on the next go. For the lamb roast joint I don't use any besan, also don't wrap it but it has 90 minutes in the oven and comes out a lot tougher. I also have a pepperoni recipe that I've been playing around with for a few months that it is really dense, but I'm not settled on that one yet.

Besan flour? Thats Gram flour right? must try that - got a bag of that I bought by accident (when trying to buy Gluten) a while back. Just sat in my cupboard since then.

I do a stuffed Sietan roast (here if anybody fancies giving it a try: https://www.veganrecipeclub.org.uk/recipes/chava-eichners-stuffed-seitan-roast). Thats the only one I've ever wrapped.

I think you might be right about not kneading it too much. Its a fine balance - too little and the texture is wrong, too much and its like a rubber ball.

[Quark]

Update: Oat milk has produced a satisfactory result for a cup of tea. Just standard Alpro as that's all that was in my local CoOp.  Hasn't split out, which is what I found soya milk doing 90% of the time.

I'll report back in the morning on coffee and porridge.

Carry on.

[Sasperella]

5 minutes ago, Quark said:

Update: Oat milk has produced a satisfactory result for a cup of tea. Just standard Alpro as that's all that was in my local CoOp.  Hasn't split out, which is what I found soya milk doing 90% of the time.

I'll report back in the morning on coffee and porridge.

Carry on.

It's glorious on porridge. So unbelievably oaty!!! 

[incident]

While I'm not Veggie/Vegan myself (and don't even drink Tea) so have no personal experience on this, Shambala Festival banned milk a couple years ago with mixed results, and as part of that they did put together a pretty extensive guide as to what alternatives are available and how they work in Tea/Coffee along with how environmentally sound they are.

[Ted Dansons Wig]

8 minutes ago, Quark said:

Update: Oat milk has produced a satisfactory result for a cup of tea. Just standard Alpro as that's all that was in my local CoOp.  Hasn't split out, which is what I found soya milk doing 90% of the time.

I'll report back in the morning on coffee and porridge.

Carry on.

Anyone else tried "Mylk" from Rebel Kitchen? Sainsburys have started doing it recently (or recently in Chippenham at least). Theres a full fat and a skimmed version. The "full fat" one is good on cereal. Its a mix of ingredients inc oat, hemp, brown rice, cashew and coconut.

[Quark]

5 minutes ago, incident said:

While I'm not Veggie/Vegan myself (and don't even drink Tea) so have no personal experience on this, Shambala Festival banned milk a couple years ago with mixed results, and as part of that they did put together a pretty extensive guide as to what alternatives are available and how they work in Tea/Coffee along with how environmentally sound they are.

Heretic!

[Mr.Tease]

5 hours ago, Quark said:

Heretic!

I also don’t drink tea. Or coffee. I have Irn Bru instead, and find it refreshing

[Quark]

Just now, Mr.Tease said:

I also don’t drink tea. Or coffee. I have Irn Bru instead, and find it refreshing

We've discussed your frankly disturbing thoughts on tea before. But you are redeemed by drinking that which is made from girrrrderrrrs.

[dentalplan]

eFesters Against Tea

[Mr.Tease]

11 minutes ago, Quark said:

We've discussed your frankly disturbing thoughts on tea before. But you are redeemed by drinking that which is made from girrrrderrrrs.

Too much and yu’ll burrrrst!

[Mr.Tease]

10 minutes ago, dentalplan said:

eFesters Against Tea

Drinking tea is essentially just a socially acceptable way of playing Russian roulette- drinking literally boiling water is just asking for your mouth to get burnt

[Quark]

This kind of chat should be grounds for account suspension.

[Kalopsia]

I'm looking for a Vegetarian cookbook, does anyone have a book they'd recommend? 

[Crazyfool01]

26 minutes ago, Quark said:

This kind of chat should be grounds for account suspension.

You can’t call for this just because it’s not your cup of tea 😀

[Mr.Tease]

55 minutes ago, Kalopsia said:

I'm looking for a Vegetarian cookbook, does anyone have a book they'd recommend? 

The No Bones Jones cookbook came out last year, if you want to create their delicious glastonbury dishes. Also have a nice stew in there.

However I’ve never found a veggie cookbook I’ve been happy with- would love to know the best one for Indian food especially, if anyone can help?

[Kalopsia]

5 minutes ago, Mr.Tease said:

The No Bones Jones cookbook came out last year, if you want to create their delicious glastonbury dishes. Also have a nice stew in there.

However I’ve never found a veggie cookbook I’ve been happy with- would love to know the best one for Indian food especially, if anyone can help?

I'll take a look at it, thanks. I've see lots of vegan ones, in particular 'BOSH!' but I'm not sure if I want strictly vegan yet. 

[Bryanrebe]

I love that this chat has descended into a tea war after only three pages. I will tarnish my reputation and admit to only drinking caffeine-free tea. I honestly can't taste the difference.

After admitting this and my lack of differentiation between fake and real chicken nuggets, I'm beginning to question my tastebuds 🤔

[Cherry Tree]

1 hour ago, Kalopsia said:

I'm looking for a Vegetarian cookbook, does anyone have a book they'd recommend? 

I use a cookbook from The Gate restaurant if we are entertaining as the recipes can be a bit chefy rather than everyday eating, it is quite a mix of flavours but probably Middle East and North African is a reasonable description. Vegetarian rather than fully vegan but does have a number of vegan recipes and others that could be adapted.
If we ever get back to going to concerts they have a restaurant round the corner from Hammersmith Apollo, less than 5 minutes walk, really good for a pre-gig meal, busy but we can usually get a table if we book early enough.

https://thegaterestaurants.com/shop/

 

 

[Kalopsia]

32 minutes ago, Cherry Tree said:

I use a cookbook from The Gate restaurant if we are entertaining as the recipes can be a bit chefy rather than everyday eating, it is quite a mix of flavours but probably Middle East and North African is a reasonable description. Vegetarian rather than fully vegan but does have a number of vegan recipes and others that could be adapted.
If we ever get back to going to concerts they have a restaurant round the corner from Hammersmith Apollo, less than 5 minutes walk, really good for a pre-gig meal, busy but we can usually get a table if we book early enough.

https://thegaterestaurants.com/shop/

 

 

Awesome! Thanks for the recommendation. I think I remember walking past it before seeing Jack White in 2018...could be wrong though! I did have a lot to drink that night tbf😂.