Friday, July 1, 2011

Veganomicon Seitanic Red & White Bean Jambalaya


The Veganomicon does it again. I'm beginning to doubt that any other cookbook is ever going to surpass this one as my favorite. This dish combines beans, rice, seitan, and a world of vegetables and spices that gives a sort of risotto-textured comfort food dish that I think still tastes kind of fancy. I'm not really a huge fan of cajun flavors typically but I really like this.


The recipe can be found here, but as you know, I really think you should just buy the book. It's so worth it.

You can use store bought seitan or make your own. When I was making this recipe, I really wanted something that would take a long time and all of my attention - I like getting lost in the details of the recipe because it takes away all the worries about everything else. For that reason, I chose to make my own seitan, and used (what else?) a recipe also from Veganomicon.


You can find the Simple Seitan recipe here.

Tips, Thoughts and Changes

1. (Timing: MOST IMPORTANT) Using brown rice, this actually took almost 2 hours to bake instead of the 45 minutes in the book. Making the seitan takes a while, so overall it took about 4 hours to make this recipe. Most of it is simmering or baking time and you could do other things. Just know you have to start early. 

2. I used vegetable broth instead of the cooking sherry. 

3. Things left out: fresh thyme, celery seed, parsley - it still tastes well-spiced. 

4. Red pepper instead of green pepper. I just kind of hate green pepper.

5. Although it doesn't specify, I drained and rinsed the cans of beans. 

6. The recipe calls for a deep casserole dish, but all I had was a 9x13 lasagna pan. With everything combined this filled it up right to the brim, so I covered it with foil as dictated and I set it on a roasting pan for the baking. It bubbled over quite a bit, but the pan contained it fine. If you have two lasagna pans, I would split it. 

7. Just be sure to taste the rice before you pull it out of the oven - baking time varies but you definitely don't want to quit while the rice is still hard - it should soak up most of the liquid. 


All together now.


Diced veggies.


Spices.


Seitan simmering in the broth. 


Diced up homemade seitan. 


It looks real weird. I agree. But there's 54 g of protein in that chunk, and it tastes awesome.


Southern love on a fork. 

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