Category: Food

For a while, I’ve wanted to experiment with imitation chicken and dumplings. Today was the perfect day — cold and rainy with a high of 44F.

I made fake chicken with seasoned wheat gluten, cut into strips. It was far from perfect, but I think it proved the concept. Wheat gluten alone is just a bit too chewy. About 10 to 20 percent ground nuts or soybeans would give a better texture. It’s also difficult to get enough flavor into the fake chicken. I used garlic powder and Vegit seasoning. Next time I’m at Whole Foods I’ll look for other seasonings that might help.

The dumplings were very good, though. I made them from unbleached King Arthur flour, an egg, and enough water to make a dough. The stock was made from onion, celery, and carrot sautéed in butter, thickened with a bit of flour.

I’d give today’s dish a B minus, but I think I can improve it next time I make it.

The fake chicken — made from wheat gluten and seasonings. This is the gluten dough before it was cooked.

Burgers made with tuna, ground brazil nuts, ground pumpkin seeds, and an egg

I use quite a lot of canned salmon, tuna, and sardines in the abbey kitchen, but other than that I have never cooked meat here. The protein foods are fish, soy milk, soybeans and other legumes, grains, lots of nuts, some rice, and the eggs that Patience, Ruth and Chastity lay. I’m always looking for ways to work more nuts into my cooking. One new method is to combine nuts ground in the blender with something like tuna for burgers. Brazil nuts are particularly interesting when used in burgers and meat analogs. When ground, they have a kind of crab-like texture.

For the burgers in the photo, I used about three parts nuts and seeds to two parts tuna. The burgers tend to be a bit dry, though, and they crave some kind of savory sauce.

I always buy the nuts from the bulk section at Whole Foods. That’s much cheaper, and fresher, than buying packaged nuts. Walnuts and pine nuts are very expensive. The best bargains in nuts right now are brazil nuts, cashews, and raw macadamia nuts. Hazelnuts also are reasonably priced, but, in my opinion, the flavor of hazelnuts doesn’t combine well with other foods.

This platter gets an F.

In my ongoing efforts to break out of the same-old-breakfast routine, this morning I attempted baked grits with cheese, blackened beans, and fried apples. The beans were terrible. I had never attempted that sort of seasoning before, and I don’t think I was quite clear on the concept. And though the grits were good, I went too far in my effort to make them a comfort food. Less cheese and less butter would have been better. I’d give myself a B+ for the concept and an F for the execution.

Here’s a serious attempt at making a low-cost, country-style, no-egg, no-meat breakfast with a little excitement to it. The beans are homemade baked beans, made in a crock pot using organic white beans bought in bulk at Whole Foods. The sausage is my homemade vegan sausage based on mashed soybeans and wheat gluten.

The yellow grits were bought in bulk at Whole Foods. Southerners eat white grits, but I’ve been experimenting with yellow grits. They have a bit more flavor than white grits, and a creamier texture. They’re even a fairly satisfying egg substitute if you put a nice dab of butter on them. Don’t use butter when you’re cooking them, though. You want only 1 portion of grits to about 4 portions of water, with some salt. Boil them for at least 20 minutes, or until they’re properly thick, then let them sit for a few minutes before serving.

The biscuits are my usual vegan biscuits, made with about half unbleached white flour and half whole wheat flour. In the biscuits I use olive oil or refined palm oil as the shortening, and I make vegan buttermilk by clabbering some soy milk with a teaspoon of cider vinegar.

One of the commenters here, Brother Doc, suggested fried apples for breakfast. That was an excellent suggestion.

This is a vegan breakfast except for the butter on the grits. I also used butter to fry the apples.

Vegan meat analogs have become a staple around here. The most recent experiment was an attempt at Lexington-style pork barbecue. There’d be no mistaking it for the real thing, but it was very good. We even ate the leftovers for breakfast (with fried apples, yellow grits, and warmed-over biscuits).

The basic ingredients for the meat analogs are legumes (either cooked, mashed soybeans or garbanzo bean flour), ground nuts (usually brazil nuts), and wheat gluten. The proportions and seasonings are varied according to the kind of analog. Mashed soybeans makes a nice analog of dark meat, and garbanzo bean flour makes a nice analog of white meat. The addition of ground nuts makes a flakier texture (like meat loaf), and the reduction or omission of the ground nuts makes a more chewy texture (like chicken or pork).

I used a homemade barbecue sauce, Lexington style (as in Lexington, North Carolina — ground zero for the type of pork barbecue that is made in this area of North Carolina). The ingredients are cider vinegar (sometimes diluted with water or apple juice), ketchup, brown sugar, black and red pepper, and salt. If you Google for “Lexington barbecue sauce” you’ll find lots of recipes. The smokiness of proper barbecue was missing. Liquid Smoke is on my shopping list. I hope that will help.

I served the barbecue with roasted potatoes, slaw, and homemade rolls. Good eatin’!

What to have for breakfast is a constant problem. The exciting choices always seem to be very sweet (cinnamon rolls, pancakes, etc.) or high in fat and cholesterol (biscuits with gravy and eggs). So I’m experimenting with baked beans for breakfast. It’s easy enough to make a big batch in a slow cooker and then store them in the refrigerator to be reheated.

Beans are certainly a healthy choice for breakfast — low fat, low carb, and a decent amount of protein. Beans also are in keeping with my vow to rely more on legumes and high-protein vegan dishes (such as homemade vegan sausages) while Ken is here. I suspect that, in some cultures, breakfast beans are a staple. I once spent a week in a hotel in New Delhi that always served an “English” style buffet breakfast that included baked beans (from a can). This breakfast buffet was very popular. New Delhi businessmen would come to the hotel for breakfast. I don’t know how English this is, though.

What’s healthy and low-carb and would go well with hot biscuits and breakfast beans? I haven’t figured this out.

Serve them hot!

What could be nicer on Christmas Eve or Christmas morning than hot cinnamon rolls. With coffee. I stopped drinking coffee more than a year ago, but this morning I made real coffee to go with the cinnamon rolls.

They’re easy enough to make. Start with a basic yeast dough. I’ve heard of making cinnamon rolls with biscuit dough, but to me that would not be proper. Make an icing of powdered sugar, milk, and vanilla. Here are the steps.

Roll the dough into a rectangular shape.

Spread the icing on the dough, then sprinkle on nutmeg and lots of cinnamon. Dot it with butter.

Roll it into a log.

Slice the log and put the rolls onto a baking sheet to rise.

When they’ve risen, pop them into the oven.

Vegan meat analogs are becoming a staple around here. By varying the texture and spices, different analogs are possible: breakfast sausage, meat loaf, chicken nuggets, and, most recently, hot dogs. The texture can be varied by changing the proportion of the three basic ingredients: mashed soybeans, wheat gluten, and ground nuts (I usually use Brazil nuts). For example, brazil nuts are great in vegan meatloaf. But when a chewier texture is desired, I omit or reduce the nuts and increase the gluten. The process is the same as the vegan sausages that I described last month.

The vegan hot dogs were a mixture of mashed soybeans, gluten, and garbanzo flour. I seasoned the mixture with dried onion, dried garlic, paprika, and ketchup. Some Liquid Smoke would have helped. That’s now on my shopping list.

I served the hot dogs with homemade rolls, homemade sauerkraut, chopped onions, and lots of mustard and ketchup.

By the way, I’m aware that gluten is deprecated these days. For the small percentage of the American population that is gluten intolerant (less than 1 percent), I understand that. But for the rest of us, gluten is (and for thousands of years has been) an excellent and important food. I am not among those who demonize wheat.

I made the hot dogs for the day before Christmas Eve. For Christmas Eve dinner, I plan to make something a little more chickeny. But we’ll be eating soybeans and gluten, not Ruth, Chastity, or Patience.