Vegan MoFo Day 26 - Tidy-up Thursdays - TVP for Caribbean patties and "bacon" bits

TVP has been cluttering my pantry for years and although it may not be the strangest pantry ingredient for a vegan to hoard I've included it in Tidy-up Thursdays as I rarely cook with it these days. By the time I came to the decision that TVP wasn't the most exciting ingredient, I had accumulated a few bags of the stuff which I've slowly been working my way through. The final remaining bag of TVP has a best before of December 2012 which doesn't deter me from using it as I don't believe this stuff can go off anyway. 

A handful of TVP recipes were spotted in my exciting new cookbook Caribbean Vegan and following the success of the first meal sampled from the book, I was very keen to give another recipe a try. I picked out some patties (filled pastries) filled with a spicy TVP mince and used frozen puff pastry sheets rather than the home made pastry in the book to shorten the preparation time. The filling was flavoured with a jerk seasoning, onions, garlic, green capsicum, curry powder, Vegemite (yay for an Aussie ingredient) and habanero chillies. I sampled the filling prior to constructing these patties and it almost blew my head off! I'm not shy about spicy food but this was right up there amongst the hottest meals I've made. We still loved the patties even those our noses were running madly but I'll be a lot more cautious when using habaneros in the future.

Another TVP based recipe which has been on my mind to try for ages is TVP "bacon" bits. I spotted this recipe in Vegan Diner where it is credited to Joni Newman, the recipe is also posted on her blog . The TVP granules are rehydrated with liquid smoke, water, salt and optional food colouring (I used beetroot powder) before being pan fried on a low heat until they are totally dried out. The "bacon" bits are very smoky and not quite salty enough for me so I would probably increase the salt next time and possibly add a touch of sweetener as well. I haven't used the "bacon" bits in a recipe yet but have plans for them in the next couple of days.

That's it for Tidy-up Thursdays! I'm not sure that my overflowing pantry has benefited much from these four posts but it was a fun exercise to find new recipes for a handful of neglected ingredients.

"Chicken" parmigianas

When I used to eat out at a pub in my former omnivorous life it was a pretty safe bet there would be a chicken parmigiana on my plate. After looking through the menu and finding it difficult to make up my mind, I would usually play it safe and end up choosing the parma. Although chicken parmigianas disappeared from my pub order many years ago, animal-free versions are eaten at home instead.

For several years it's been easy to curb the occasional parma craving with the assistance of Fry's chicken-style schnitzels, topped with Napoli sauce and vegan cheese. A slice or two of tofu bacon is also added if there is any leftover in the fridge. It wasn't until the arrival of Vegan Diner that I gathered inspiration from a couple of the seitan recipes and began to think about recreating my own.

 The taste and texture of the seitan recipes I've made from Vegan Diner so far has been impressive. Julie Hasson seems to have a knack when it comes to nailing combinations of dried herbs and spices which provide the seitan with wonderful flavours. The wet to dry ratio of ingredients is perfect unlike other seitan recipes I've made where I have needed to reduce the amount of liquid. After I had made Julie's skillet-baked panko cutlets (which reminded me of chicken parmigianas with totally different seasonings) and chicken-style seitan roast I thought about morphing the two recipes to create some parmigianas.

The chicken-style seitan lists a poultry seasoning in the ingredients which is something I'm not familiar with. A quick search told me that it's basically a mixture of dried herbs, the blend of herbs varied a lot between different sources. I went with some marjoram, sage, parsley, thyme and vegan chicken stock in place of the soy sauce in the recipe. The seitan ingredients are mixed together briefly in a bowl rather then kneaded with rest periods in between which makes it very easy to prepare. After flattening pieces of dough between your palms to create the schnitzels, it's just a matter of steaming and then allowing them to sit overnight before putting turning them into parmas. 

The seitan schnitzels are coated with flour, soy milk and breadcrumbs before they are lightly browned in the pan. After being transferred to a baking dish they are topped with Napoli sauce and grated vegan cheese. I've included a recipe for a quick smooth Napoli sauce I used for the topping, if you don't have the time or inclination some tomato paste thinned with water or a pizza sauce with herbs will also suffice. The parmas only require a short bake in the oven as they only need to be heated through and for the cheese to melt.

The parmas were a household hit - the combination of herbs in the seitan worked out perfectly.  Comments were made about the kitchen smelling like roast chicken while the schnitzels were steaming. I made nine schnitzels out of this batch which were purposely on the smaller side as seitan is quite filling. A combination of roasted vegetables were a delicious accompaniment, another good partner for this meal would be a side of fries and salad. I'm so pleased to have a few more batches of these schnitzels waiting in the freezer for the next time my parma craving hits.

Chicken schnitzels (Adapted from Vegan Diner)
Makes 8-9

2 cups gluten flour
½ cup nutritional yeast flakes
¼ cup besan
1 tablespoon onion flakes
1 teaspoon sea salt
½ teaspoon white pepper
1 heaped teaspoon marjoram
½ teaspoon dried sage
½ teaspoon dried parsley
½ teaspoon dried thyme
1 tablespoon olive oil
2 cups vegan chicken stock (cold or at room temperature)

Place the gluten flour, nutritional yeast flakes, chickpea flour, onion flakes, marjoram, sage, parsley, thyme, salt and white pepper in a bowl and mix together thoroughly. Pour in the olive oil and vegan chicken stock and combine the ingredients with a spoon until a smooth dough forms.

Divide the dough into equal sized pieces and flatten each piece between your palms to a size of approximately 10 cm x 10 cm. Place the flattened dough pieces into a steamer basket lined with foil, allowing the schnitzels to overlap slightly if necessary. Steam for 40 minutes then allow the schnitzels to cool down completely. Refrigerate before using. The seitan schnitzels may also be frozen if you aren't using them all at once.

Quick smooth Napoli sauce
Makes enough sauce to top 3-4 schnitzels

1 tablespoon olive oil
1 teaspoon garlic, minced
¾ cup tomato passata
pinch of dried basil (or use a few fresh basil leaves)
sea salt and freshly cracked black pepper, to taste

Heat the olive oil over medium heat in a small saucepan. Add the garlic and allow it to sizzle for 10-30 seconds until the garlic begins to colour. Pour in the tomato passata and stir well then add the basil and season to taste. Bring to the boil then reduce the heat and simmer for 10 minutes.

Chicken Parmigianas

Preheat oven to 200C.

Set up three bowls for breading the schnitzels - plain flour in the first, soy milk with a teaspoon of apple cider vinegar in the second and breadcrumbs in the third. Cover a schnitzel with plain flour, wet it thoroughly with the soy milk mixture and then dunk it into the breadcrumbs ensuring it is well coated with the crumbs. Repeat for the other schnitzels.

Heat a frying pan over medium heat with some oil and fry the schnitzels until golden brown on both sides. Place the schnitzels in a baking dish, then top with Napoli sauce and grated vegan cheese.

Bake in the oven for 10-15 minutes or until the cheese has melted.

Melbourne to Perth road trip

Hello dear readers, apologies once again for the lengthy break between posts. I’ve just returned from my longest holiday ever (as well as the biggest break I've had from full-time work) travelling around Western Australia. Previous vacations of around two weeks have always gone by too quickly so the man and I have been saving up our dollars and annual leave for a while so we could enjoy a month long holiday. After we adopted Ollie our travel plans developed into an Australian based road trip and dog friendly vacation as we didn’t feel it would be fair to leave our new family member in a boarding kennel for such a long period.

Map of our road trip including nightly stops

For those who are unfamiliar with where I live and/or with the geography of Australia, the distance from Melbourne in Victoria to Perth in Western Australia is approximately 3500 km by road. Most of the drive is through incredibly isolated terrain and includes crossing the Nullarbor Plain which runs across the Great Australian Bight. In the most remote areas, roadhouses (service stations selling fuel, snacks and souvenirs) are up to 200 km apart, often without a single residence in between.

A giant galah stands outside a shop in Kimba - "Half way across Australia"

Travelling from Melbourne to Perth with a dog meant that we were limited to camping along the way as the motel style accommodation at roadhouses don’t allow you to stay with pets. Knowing that it would be virtually impossible to find suitable food for us on the road trip, I planned ahead and prepared tofu bacon, chickpea eggs (adapted from Vegan Eats World) and delicious seitan pastrami from Vegan Diner. These items were kept cold in our Esky (Aussie brand of cooler/car fridge) along with dairy-free margarine, vegan cheeses, Fry’s chicken-style burgers, Linda McCartney sausages and salad items.

Cooking up breakfast on our little camping stove 

A portable pantry in the form of a large plastic tub accompanied us on our month long journey which was depleted and restocked several times. Its contents included tinned baked beans, kidney beans, chickpeas and tomatoes, olive oil, bread, rice, Vegemite (yeast extract), ketchup, mustard, mayonnaise, Tapatio hot sauce, curry powder, cayenne pepper, mango chutney and snacks such as BBQ shapes, potato chips, nuts and dried fruit amongst other things.

Vegemite on toast (plus avocado for me) is what the man and I eat for breakfast on a regular basis and we continued this tradition throughout our travels. It was a challenge to perfect cooking toast over a naked flame on our gas cooking stove so we did have to suffice with the odd burnt section every so often. We enjoyed a big brekky on one occasion which was simply a matter of heating up precooked tofu bacon, chickpea eggs, baked beans and frying some tomatoes.

The spectacular Bunda cliffs 

Packing up campsites, driving long distances and setting up a new campsite at the end of each day meant that we didn’t have much time to stop and look at a lot of the sights along the way. Apart from roadhouse rests for fuel and toilets the only unscheduled stop I insisted on making was to one of the Bunda Cliffs lookouts close to the SA/WA border. This breathtaking spectacle of 120m high limestone cliffs above the crashing brilliant blue ocean was definitely worth a 10 minute break. Heaps of other photos on our 5 day trip across were taken from a moving vehicle which is not ideal although it did allow me to capture the ever changing landscapes along our hasty travels.

As we were spending somewhere between 7 to 10 hours on the road every day, a pre-made sandwich was usually on the lunch menu. Seitan pastrami, Vegusto vegan cheese, avocado, lettuce, tomato and cucumber with the man’s favourite combination of vegan mayonnaise, American mustard and hot sauce kept us satisfied until we crossed the border from South Australia into Western Australia. There are restrictions about bringing fresh fruit and vegetables into Western Australia which meant that we had to ditch our remaining salad items, scoff down the last of our fresh fruit and rely on packaged foods until we reached Kalgoorlie.

Whilst I’m on the topic of packaged foods, our saving grace over the month eventuated from a trip to a local Indian grocer just before our departure. I had been on the lookout for easy, nutritious meals and found some heat and eat curries on their shelves. There only appeared to be 3 vegan meals out of around 15 varieties of vegetable curries as most of the others contained butter or cream. If you do come across the Pattu range, the Baignan Bharta (eggplant curry), Bhindi Masala (okra curry) and Peas Pulav (basmati rice with green peas and cashews) are all vegan. I wasn’t convinced they would be the most authentic tasting meals or spicy enough for our tastes and planned to perk them up with additional spices but it didn't turn out to be necessary. These meals were such a pleasant surprise so we continued to try out other brands of Indian convenience foods from standard supermarkets during the rest our trip.

The sachets are placed into boiling water for 5 minutes or microwaved if you happen to have one handy. Even though some of the curries are rather oily, they aren't particularly high in calories and fat and are free of any preservatives and artificial colours and flavours. The Tasty Bite range are not as flavoursome as the Pattu curries but they are available at most large Australian supermarkets with the Indian foods and are clearly labelled as vegan or vegetarian meals. We particularly enjoyed Punjab Eggplant and Mumbai Mushrooms from the Tasty Bite range. Some nights we scooped the curries up with chappatis rather than bothering to serve them with rice.

Sunrise over wetlands at Port Wakefield

So that's pretty much how we ate whilst travelling remotely for 5 days. Burgers and a few other meals were consumed along the way which I didn't remember to take photos of. There will be more posts to follow about Perth eats and the rest of the food on our trip over the the next few weeks. For now I'll leave you with a recipe which the man fondly refers to as "eggies". I've been making this since testing Ethiopian But'echa (Fluffy scrambled chickpea eggs) for Terry Hope Romero's cookbook Vegan Eats World. My adaptation omits the chillies, includes some black salt and cuts down on a couple of steps and dishes.  

Sand dunes at Port Augusta with the Flinders Ranges in the background

Scrambled chickpea eggs aka. eggies (Adapted from Vegan Eats World)

1 cup besan/chickpea flour
1 tablespoon olive oil
1 medium onion, finely diced
1 2/3 cups warm water
3 tablespoon lemon juice
½ teaspoon black salt
¼ teaspoon sea salt, or to taste
pepper, to taste

Cook the besan in a large saucepan over medium heat, stirring constantly for 2 minutes or until the flour darkens slightly and smells toasty. Transfer the besan to a bowl. Pour in the olive oil and fry the onions for about 5 minutes or until they soften. Transfer the onions to a plate or small bowl.

Pour the water, lemon juice, black salt and sea salt into the saucepan. Start adding the besan into the saucepan a few tablespoons at a time, whisking all the time. After all of the besan has been added, use a spatula and continue stirring until the mixture becomes very thick and begins to pull away from the sides. Fold through the onions, turn off the heat and allow it to cool down for 10 minutes.

Drag a fork through the mixture to break it up into small lumps resembling scrambled eggs. Season with additional salt if required and black pepper, to taste.

This may be eaten warm or cold and it can be stored in an airtight container in the refrigerator for at least a week. Adding curry powder and mayonnaise at the end is on my to-do list to create curried "eggs" for sandwiches.