vegan holidays, the illustrated handbook

for new year's 2007, vegan chef no. 1 and vegan chef no. 2 aka me and gica, respectively (or viceversa), prepared the following meal:

• vegetable pate starters
• tofu pie with artichokes and wild garlic
• oyster mushroom soup with herbed croutons
• pan-seared home-made seitan "steak" with mushroom sauce
• salad with lemon and mustard seed vinaigrette
• chili pepper relish
• rosemary mashed potatoes
• coconut vanilla cake with raspberry filling and chocolate
  

i only have time for a photo diary of the cooking and end result right now, but in the near future i'll try to write down quantitative recipes as well.

making the seitan
[start broth for boiling raw seitan in]

[knead the dough made from gluten flour, water, oil, spices]


[raw seitan ready for cutting]


[make marinade for boiled seitan, let sit]

[boil seitan well, ~2 hours]

[marinate boiled seitan pieces]

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further info on making seitan:

-> a very good, simple gluten-flour recipe from postpunk kitchen
-> more about seitan/gluten/wheat-meat at:

• wikipedia
• seitan gourmet
• ellen's kitchen (includes a recipe for making seitan the old-fashioned - and very long - way, too, starting with whole wheat flour rather than gluten-rich flour, kneading and washing the dough repeatedly to isolate the gluten)

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putting together the rest of the meal
[vanilla cake and raspberry sauce prepared]
(the cake also contains coconut, rum essence and lemon rind)
(the sauce is fresh raspberries, sugar, soy milk, cornstarch)

[boiling oyster mushroom soup with seitan veggie broth]

[tofu, artichoke and wild garlic pesto filling]

[cake cut into two layers and chocolate glaze cooling]

[tofu pie before going into the oven]

[assembling the cake with raspberry filling and chocolate glaze]




[pan-searing seitan in marinade and additional spices]

[starting mushroom sauce/gravy; to be added: veggies from seitan broth, soy sauce, cornstarch, spices]

[finished pie]

[bibb lettuce with mustard seeds, lemon juice, olive oil, salt, pepper]

[finished seitan "steakes"]


ready for eatin'