This is a recipe from Madhur Jaffery's World of the East Vegetarian Cooking. I've had this book for several years, and am ashamed to say, I've never really used it. But, when Zoa from The Airy Way blog made this dish for VeganMofo, I was inspired to try it. You have to check out her beautiful rendition of the dish; she did it much more justice than I. And, while I'm at it, anyone who's interested in sushi simply has to check out this lady's talents in that department. She dedicated a whole weekend to sushi during Mofo: here's Post 1 and here's Post 2.
Back to the cookbook... this recipe is entitled 'Stew of Baked Wheat Gluten, Potato, Turnip, Carrot, and Cabbage Rolls', and it's billed as Japanese fare. It really is a simple, yet elegant and very tasty dish. I can't give out the recipe, obviously because it belongs to the book. But roughly, this is how it goes...
First, you make a delicious stock with bean sprouts, mushrooms, and other veggies:
Then you strain the stock and end up with a lovely broth, seasoned with Japanese Soy Sauce among other things:
Now you make some wheat gluten balls. I've been making seitan for years, but have never made these: they are surprising and fun. All you do is mix wheat gluten with water, form little balls and bake them for about 15 minutes. They puff up like little pastries:
After you take them out of the oven, they deflate and end up looking like this:
They make an interesting and tasty addition to the stew.
You put the stew together by cooking the rutabaga, potato, carrots, cabbage rolls, and wheat gluten in the broth. I added some shitake mushroom and scallions as well. The recipe indicates that it should be arranged very prettily in the pot for cooking, with the carrots and cabbage rolls grouped together and off to one side. But, honestly, that was too "fiddley" for me, so I just arranged it nicely in the bowl:
The cabbage rolls look neat and they really aren't difficult. You just steam some cabbage and use the leaves as wrappers for the spinach.
Roseann LaPonte
Rosanne Tobin
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That is a very interesting stew. What was the texture of the baked and then simmered tofu like?
ReplyDeleteI am going to run this by my Japanese friend to find out if she has any ideas on other traditional items to include.
talk to you soon,
Alicia
The gluten balls are chewy, even after simmering. They add a great texture; it's the sort of thing that you kind of eat half with a fork (or chop sticks to be more traditional) and half with a spoon, or else you could soak up the delicious broth with something and eat it that way.
ReplyDeleteI'm definitely keeping this in my recipe rotation.
uAUU! that looks really good! but a little complicated..
ReplyDeleteI have this book, too, and while everything in it looks delicious, I think I've only used it once. This stew sounds wonderful, though. We'll have to try it.
ReplyDeleteThat looks really good. I'll have to try that out soon. Great blog you have here by the way!
ReplyDeleteCarlota:
ReplyDeleteIt has a lot of steps, but each one is fairly straightforward.
Brigid:
I'm the same; I haven't really used this book, although it's got a plethora or recipes and is a great resource. I'm going to try to use it more often.
Raising Seven Vegans:
ReplyDeleteThanks for commenting. It is really good; and pretty simple once you have all the broth and the gluten balls done.
That looks and sounds so delicious! To make the wheat gluten balls seems a little bit complicated for me. I think I'll just make the stew with veggies which sounds like my kind of food, YUM!!!
ReplyDeleteOraphan,
ReplyDeleteThanks for commenting. This is really good nourishing stuff...and I think it would be just as good w/o the gluten balls.
I'm glad you made this, including the gluten balls! Nice job organizing the stew in the bowl; it looks beautiful.
ReplyDeleteThanks Zoa,
ReplyDeleteI really enjoyed this; I'm definitely going to make this on a regular basis.