Vegan Pot Roast

I finally came out of a post MoFo-induced stupor and got these pics uploaded. It's a vegan pot roast.

Also, a mizuna salad with roasted squash and pomegranate.

I got the idea for the salad from Cadry's Kitchen blog. If you go to her site, you'll see that she has some fun cooking videos in the sidebar, and one of them talks about roasting winter squash, and some suggestions on how to use it. One of her suggestions was to put it in a salad, which I thought was a great idea. I found Cadry's site through MoFo, when she did a delightful series of posts around Deserted Island Packing Lists...(highly recommend), and thanks to Cadry for the salad idea! The dressing was just a little olive oil, whole grain mustard, and sherry vinegar.

The pot roast  is based on Jo Stepaniak's recipe in the Vegan Vittles cookbook. I've made it several times, and by now have  tweaked the recipe into my own variation by adding in a few bells and whistles, and omitting a few other things.

I like to eat it with sweet and sour red cabbage and/or lots of spicy mustard. Mr. Dandelion likes it ok as a pot roast, but prefers the leftovers broiled up with BBQ sauce.

Pot Roast Seitan, adapted from Vegan Vittles, by Jo Stepaniak

generous 1.5 cups vital wheat gluten....I usually end up using about 1 and 3/4 cups
1/4 cup nutritional yeast
1/2 teaspoon garlic powder
1/2 teaspoon ground cumin
generous pinch of celery seed
1 cup water
1 tablespoon vegan worcestershire
1 tablespoon soy sauce
1 tablespoon ketchup

Mix the dry ingredients together in a large bowl. In a separate bowl, whisk together all wet ingredients, add the wet ingredients into the dry ingredients and stir just until it's all incorporated, then stop. Don't continue stiring or kneading, this will make the seitan come out rubbery. (I mean, it's a little rubbery anyway, but not to make it more so. )

Put the seitan on a work surface and shape into a rectangle. Heat a large non-stick skillet over medium high, add a touch of olive oil  and brown off the seitan rectangle on each side. Be sure to put it on a well-heated skillet, or it will end up sticking.  It may stick slightly anyway, but just keep sliding a spatula under the seitan as it browns to prevent it from sticking too much.

Setian Braising Liquid

1 medium onion, sliced
1 medium shallot, sliced
2 ribs celery, or 1 celery heart, chopped
3 cloves garlic, smashed
2 carrots, chopped into large chunks
pinch of oregano, or other herb/s of choice
1 bay leaf
3 cups rich veggie broth ( I used 1 cup no-beef broth, and two cups low-sodium veggie broth)
2 tablespoons red wine vinegar

Saute the onion and shallot over medium-low until the onion begins to caramelize ~ 15 minutes, add in the bay leaf, oregano, garlic, celery, and carrot, and saute for another 5 minutes. Add in veggie broth and vinegar and increase heat to bring the broth to a simmer. When the broth is simmering, drop in the browned seitan, cover partially, turn down heat just enough so it's not boiling, but continues to simmer gently. Allow the seitan to simmer for  ~ 60 to 90 minutes, turning the seitan about halfway through.

About 30-40 minutes before serving, drizzle a selection of veggies with a little olive oil (or omit for fat free) and ladle some of the simmering broth over them, then roast them in the oven.

After you remove the seitan from the pot, you can puree the simmered broth with the simmered veggies to make a gravy (you may want to remove the bay leaf first) :

Pot roast on the table. It takes about 2 hours from stove to table, but most of it is down time.