Could it be...Seitan!?!

The indelible words of the Church Lady (Dana Carvey's character on SNL) inspired my next venture into the realm of vegetarian cooking. Much like I would try a new type of fish, a new international cuisine or other flavors, I am trying to use vegetarian staples and see how best to utilize them. This particular meal featured seitan and is a perfect example of how not to prepare it and potentially lose friends in the process.

Have you heard of seitan? If not, I will tell you how it is made. You know all of those broken-down boxes behind your local post office? Well, those boxes are collected and driven by ox cart to an open field. The boxes are then laid out end-to-end and left out in the rain for two weeks. Then the boxes are rolled together and wrung out with a two-armed crane, that twists them like a washcloth...Ok maybe not, but you can see my subtle point that seitan appears to me to have the qualities of wet cardboard. If you want more information about seitan, visit your local post office. I discovered that it is basically wheat gluten so that it can be a protein supplement in vegetarian cooking...Hooray!

Armed with virtually no knowledge of what I was doing, I began chopping the seitan and cooking a dinner that is sure to either be a delightful meal for close friends, or end up like some sort of weird suicide pact. I minced the seitan so that it resembled (only visually, possibly in spirit) chopped artichoke hearts.  

Raw seitan...which looks exactly the same as cooked seitan

Then I cooked a few cups of quinoa, roasted some fresh (like right off the plant) broccoli in the oven, made a white sauce (mostly half-n-half, flour and butter...although I added some pepperjack and romano cheeses, salt pepper and nutmeg) and blended a dressing comprised of spicy mustard, thyme, worcestershire, S+P+Cayenne, and canola oil. Admittedly, it was sort of a raid-the-fridge-style recipe. So I sautéed the seitan in some of the dressing and tossed it with the quinoa and served it alongside the roasted broccoli and cream sauce. Here is what it looked like...

See. Absolutely no difference.

And here is what I learned...

Vegetarian “meat” substitutions are not a 1 to 1 replacement for meat. You cannot, for example, serve a slab of seitan in the same manner as two breasts of grilled chicken. I learned this lesson the hard way as I was choking down hand-fulls of seitan and quinoa. If I can accurately describe this experience, it would be like eating minced soggy cardboard-flavored raw oyster, with a hint of a delightful oil-based dressing. Perhaps, using seitan as a replacement for meat in a stir fry (as recommended by every website on the internet with the word seitan in it) is preferable to gobbling hunks of it and trying not to cry in front of your dinner guests.

While I am proud that I tried something new and adventurous, it may have come at the cost of a few friendships. Armed with the lessons learned from this first attempt, I am excited to try this again, with a different recipe and a new group of friends to alienate. 

I am not sure if the Church Lady would approve or disapprove of this meal, but I am certain the only thing left to say is, "well isn't that special."