A Vegan Called Bacon

Phew - chapter one of the great seitan adventure is more-or-less complete. I wasn’t expecting it to be this difficult.  There’s so many possible variations.  I made thirty-four different varieties of sausage.  I ended up chewing and then spitting samples out like a wine buff, because even a gluten glutton like me couldn’t contemplate that much rubbery dough sat in my stomach.

I decided to focus on sausages for this part of the adventure.  I concentrated on the steaming-in-foil method, because it’s quick and easy, thus allowing for more variations in the same amout of time.

The starting point was Vegan Dad’s sausage recipe.  It came out as the most hilariously gross thing I have ever had the pleasure to cook:

I was so pleased that I posted the image to a thread “what’s your grossest food porn pic?” at the PPK forums.  My favourite response was:

“you win, dude. YOU. WIN.”

So anyway, in the following weeks, I steamed my way through a bewildering and message catalogue of sausage options.  I tried them mixed with mushrooms, apples, potato. I steamed them for 10 minutes, 30 minutes and 40 minutes. I wrapped them tight and I wrapped them loose.  I made them moist and sticky, and firm and powdery.  I ate them immediately and I left them overnight.

Here’s what I found:

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Good gluten meat is great.  In China they’ve been doing it for centuries (I’ve described elsewhere the variety we encountered there) .  My theory is that to really push the art of faux meat forward in the West, we need to learn and translate their knowledge on the subject. Bryanna Clark Grogan’s Authentic Chinese Cuisine (one of my favourite cook books) does a pretty good job, but there’s still a long way to go before this kind of silly, fun nonsense is possible:

The strangest faux meat I've ever seen: mock pigeon

Meanwhile, it seems to me that most progress in the art of cooking with gluten that I read about is largely won at random.  Steam it for 20 minutes or 40 minutes?  Bake it for 60 or 120 minutes?  At 300F or 375F?  Why?  I’m confused!

I’ve spent a while reviewing the most popular recipes online, and have compiled a list of possible variations based on these. It’s ambitious, but I want to find out what really makes a difference to the texture of that wonderful, wierd, chewy stuff we call seitan.  And in the process, I’ve gathered about a million different styles and opinions about making it.

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Since we moved to Glasgow, most of our cooking equipment has remained in storage, somewhere in darkest, suburban England. This includes piles of old magazines, records I’ve not listened to for ten years, and old pairs of shoes; but most importantly, it includes my trusty blender.

(I hate the fact that one day, all our crap will turn up in boxes at our flat, and we’ll have to face up to the reality of a lifetime of junk. Storage companies must make a fortune by collecting monthly fees from people in denial about their boxes of useless gewgaws.)

In my new, blenderless world, I have been shying away from soups. But now I have crossed over to the Chunky Side. Kim has been telling me for years that it’s better when it’s Chunky, but I’ve always ignored her, and whizzed away the little ragged cubes of potato and the mushy beans into a smooth, featureless monotony.

No longer!

Writing out a recipe for soup seems as useful as giving someone instructions on how to use a hand dryer. Cook vegetables, add stock, boil; what more do you need to know?

Still, I should make an effort. The picture at the top of this post is, obviously, Borsht. (Kim took a look at the photo and said, “looks like entrails”). I grated lots of fresh beetroot and some carrots, and also included tiny, diced pieces of butternut squash, and a little shredded cabbage. I might have put in a bit of apple, though I’m not sure. I dressed it up with cumin, a dash of vinegar, and a sprinkle of sugar.

The second photo is of potato and leek soup. I use one leek and three small potatoes per person. I slice the leeks into fairly thin rounds, and sweat them slowly in oil, in a covered pan. I make teeny-weeny diced potato, with the skin still on. I add stock and boil for a good 30 minutes. Then I take a potato masher and thicken it up, roughly. I’ve been doing that one at least once a week, lately. It’s about 10 minutes prep, cheap, and very, very tasty. And much better when it’s CHUNKY.

Finally, this one’s the beginning of a minestrone:

Lightly fried red onion and garlic, diced carrot, courgette, green beans, bell peppers (yellow and red), a handful of diced mushrooms, all sweated up so it looks like the picture. Follow up with a handful of roughly chopped fresh tomatoes, some tomato puree, and stock. Throw in some small pasta (I used penne, put it in a bag, and trampled upon it, delicately). Five minutes before the end, add plenty of chopped parsley and some bits of fresh basil. Lots of people put in some beans but I’m not too sure about that.

I forgot to take a picture of the Chunky results, but that picture there is quite full enough of Chunk. And what’s more, the shadow in the background is cool.

But now, unfortunately, I am going to have to face up to the storage reality. Eighty pounds a month is a hefty price to pay for the convenience of not having to look at my seventeen threadbare towels and thirty three pairs of holey socks. At least I’ll get my blender back, and will once again be able to make breadcrumbs.

At least some of my soups will stay Chunky, however.

Hooray, mushroom season.  I absolutely love searching out the little fellows.  It’s a gladiatorial contest ‘twixt man and fungus.  I know they hide from me, but I know their tricks.  The tasty ones (like chanterelles) send out their inedible friends (russulas, usually… that’s the slimy red or yellow ones) as decoys.  But I get them in the end. Hunting, vegan style.

Plus, you get the thrill of sometimes deciding, for a change, to select some ones you haven’t eaten before, and to try eating those, and seeing if you die or not.  For example, the other day, I picked a few Amethyst Deceivers.  And if that’s not a name to make you think maybe they’re inedible, I don’t know what is.  (Apart from “Destroying Angel”, I suppose).  Just take a look at them, they’re purple for god’s sake:

They were pretty tasty, in the end.  A nice firm texture, and a bit nutty.

So, whenever I find a new and interesting-looking mushroom, I take photos or a specimen and identify it. And then forget what it was called. The other day I found a new way of remembering them. Here’s what you do:

• Go picking with children, including an 11 month boy.  (Remembering to give all the children lots of lessons and reminders about not touching a mushroom unless an adult says it’s OK)
• Find an interesting new specimen and pocket it, separately from the edible ones
• Go home.  Have a beer and cook dinner.  Get hot and leave your jacket on the floor.
• Have the baby boy remind you that the mushroom was in your pocket by seeing him with it in his mouth
• Become numbed with dread.  Spend 2 hours positively identifying the mushroom and feeling like a dangerous fool

And it turns out it’s not toxic.  Probably.  Very much.

This season, we’ve also enjoyed some shaggy ink caps, hedgehog mushrooms, ceps, and some chanterelles:

If you’ve not gone shrooming before, the only decent way to start is by going with an expert.  In the UK, at least, it’s pretty easy to find Fungi Forays led by obsessive professors in old woodland areas, during the season.  As for cooking them, I think it’s a shame to shroud the interesting flavours that you’ve spent so long hunting down.  I prefer to fry them up in a neutral-flavoured oil, with only a small bit of garlic (if you really must) and maybe a splash of white wine.  And salt and pepper, of course.  And if you can cook them outside, all the better for that wild-man-or-woman-of-the-woods vibe.

In my quest for chewy, I have found a couple of interesting textures. Pork belly, and calamari. We reckon they’re made from rice. So I bought some “rice cakes” and experimented. Here’s a quick writeup of the experiment, for the record.

We start with the raw ingredients: hard, waxy squares. Pretty unappetising.

We continue by cooking them in the three ways outlined on the back of the packet. First, just boil them. Second, stir fry them, then steam them in a little water in the wok. Third, boil them in a little water, let it boil away, then fry them. Here’s what all three look like in the end:

The ones at the back were boiled-then-fried. They were OK I suppose. Basically tasted like fat, which is all right in my book. More or less large, flat, crunchy croutons. They had a nice colour, though.

The ones in the middle were fried-then-steamed. They came out kind of grey. They were chewy in a cardboardy kind of way. No thanks.

The white ones were the ones that were simply boiled. They tasted of nothing much. A little like rice, not surprisingly. The texture, however, was kind of interesting, as it was pleasantly chewy.

To conclude the experiment: largely, a pointless ingredient. But I think I might try using the boiled version in a dish that calls for chewy seafood. 

Mapo Doufu (Pockmarked Old Woman’s Tofu) is one of the most popular tofu dishes in China. Its traditional flavours are tofu, fried ground pork, mala, and doubanjiang (Sichaun Bean Paste).

You basically fry the ground pork so it’s a bit crispy, and set it aside; fry the bean paste in oil for 30 seconds, along with some extra chillies and sichuan pepper; then add some stock and boil chunks of soft tofu in that, with some scallions or leeks. Add the pork back in, and finish by thickening it with some potato or corn starch.

I encountered several challenges in preparing this. I didn’t have any vegetable stock, which doesn’t appear to exist in China (only pork, chicken and beef stocks), so I used Marmite (which travels with me everywhere, of course). I couldn’t find doubanjiang, so I used a red bean chilli garlic paste, which you can find everywhere.

Talking with a meaty person, they said the pork is a pretty important part of the dish. They told me it adds a slightly crunchy, chewy texture, and a slightly smoky flavour. I got excited in a tofu geek kind of way when I realised I could try substituting ground smoked tofu (doufu xun yu, “firm smoked tofu”) for ground pork. It meant I could use two types of tofu in one dish and make a good start to my tofu marathon.

The soft tofu was yellowish and smelled of egg. I took a nibble and it tasted of egg too. I looked up the Chinese characters on the label. Egg tofu. Shit. I ran to the market next door and found an old guy selling tons of fresh tofu products. It seems that tofu made that very morning is a delicious thing. It wobbled enticingly on the plate and smelled very delicate and moreish. I need to find a fresh tofu seller when I get home. And it cost 10p.

All mapo doufu recipes I’ve seen call for you to boil the tofu chunks in salted water before continuing. I tried this and kept some other chunks aside for comparison. I have no idea what boiling is meant to do, but the flavour and texture of the boiled and unboiled versions was the same. If anything, the unboiled one tasted better.

Next up, making the “pork”. I chopped the smoked tofu into tiny cubes and then mashed them with the back of a fork. I gues you could use a blender or a big pestle and mortar to do the same thing. It looked like this (that’s Beijing in the background):

Then I fried it in very hot peanut oil for a few minutes until browned and a bit crispy, while still being chewy.

Finally, I just followed the recipe… frying the spicy stuff and the paste, boiling the tofu with “stock” and some onion-type things, stirring in the “pork” and some thickener at the end. You have to stir it very carefully or the tofu gets mushed up.

End result: a pretty tasty dish. I needed to adjust the flavours at the end by adding a bit of Chinese “sherry”, because it wasn’t rich enough. I think if I’d used a decent stock it would have been fine without. I also need to find a better chilli paste, preferably proper doubanjiang. The one I used was quite salty so I held back on it, meaning the dish wasn’t as spicy as I’d have liked. I also used ground Sichuan Pepper which doesn’t have so much flavour, so my mouth hardly got numb at all. But I think for most people who just like “normal” spicy, it would have been just right.

Plus, I think the “pork” worked a treat. My first point on the texture scoreboard.

Today I read a frustrated rant about preachy vegans. I like unpreachy vegans. I want to be one. When you are ethically pure, morally consistent, infinitely compassionate and most definitely right, it’s pretty hard, but I like to think I try.

When we were in South America we met a great couple called Dan and Laura. Dan is a complete foodie. Especially when he’s had some glasses of wine. Then he starts talking tenderly and excitedly about food. When he talked about his dad’s vegetable plot in Guernsey, it practically made my eyes well up. And when he talked about some kind of meaty chicken thing involving taking all its bones out and rolling it up, even that sounded interesting.

One of the nice things about Dan is that he loves all food. He doesn’t think that a meal without meat is incomplete. He’s just as capable as getting excited about a shiny, bulbous, purple-black aubergine as a pimply, waxy duck carcass. It was great, because we both got to talk about food without anyone getting preachy.

I met a vegan the other day (at the Vegan Social Club of Beijing) who reckons every vegan dreams of opening a restaurant. Well, it has been decided, during our over excited, wine-drenched shouting, that Dan and I are without doubt going to open a restaurant where every vegan dish on the menu has a meat one next to it.

His meats would be “cruelty-free” (at least up to the point of slaughter). I would get a chance to convince meaty people that food without animals is OK. Vegans and non-vegans could go out for meals together. Dan and I would both learn more about food of all kinds. Maybe a couple fewer cows might die or a couple of pigs might lead a happier life.

I don’t know how many vegans would be into this kind of idea. Definitely not the preachy ones. I’m such a softcore vegan that when we were in Ecuador, and I was in charge of the kitchen on the farm, I actually cooked some kind of chicken in cream sauce for the workers (without tasting it, of course). Apparently it was really good, though I think they would say that, wouldn’t they.

I’m even quite interested in the mechanics of butchering and cooking meat. When our friend Esteban had a sheep slaughtered for his birthday I had to go away when they killed it - it was horrible. But once the deed was done, I quite enjoyed watching the neighbour use an ancient kitchen knife, wielded in a swish-slash-swish-sloosh-slash kind of way, to turn a previously terrified sheep into a set of chops, a woolly rug, and, well, a sheep’s head.

So, given I’m really only opposed to killing animals, rather than to meat itself (obviously I’m not going to buy or eat it), I’ve been thinking more about bringing the good stuff about meat into vegan food. It’s quite common to hear people express puzzlement about pretend meats (”I don’t see the point”), and it’s true that I don’t care for the taste of blood. And I have noticed the phrase “that really smells of fish” usually indicates distaste.

But one thing I’ve realised is that there is something missing in a lot of vegan cuisine that you get “for free” with meat, and that’s different varieties of chewy. So I hereby vow to investigate in full all its forms, chewy and preferably proteinous vegan foodstuffs, including seitan, tofu, and weird gelatinous things made from strange plants.

Who fancies some vegan whelk?