Everybody Else Was Doin' It
Everyone's journals have suddenly become all foodified, so I thought I'd join in... especially since (much to the amusement of my coworkers when I informed them) I made seitan for the first time tonight.
That's it on the right. The thing that looks like cow.
Beyond the name, seitan is a bit perverse to me; I've spent a year with a guy who can't have gluten or casein, figuring out how to do bizarre things with rice flour and scrutinizing packaging for the dread pirate wheat. Reading the seitan recipe was like discovering that the main ingredient in your souffle is rat poison.
Making seitan is a strange experience, too. It's basically uberbread, and you knead it... but the dough smells, tastes, and looks freakishly like meat, ripping apart in ghoulish tendons as you work it, like you're Superman battling a particularly nefarious turkey.
I made sauteed portabellas in a mushroom gravy with truffle oil to go on top, mashed potatoes, and lemon pepper broccoli. Then I realized I wasn't actually all that hungry, saran-wrapped it, stuck it in the fridge, and had five Junior Mints for dinner instead.
Yay, nutrition.