Veggie food series: How to make seitan

I realized I've never posted this even though I already wrote in in October, so here you go:

Anyhow, I just wanted to share my love for SEITAN. What an incredible thing it is.

Inspired by the "no-alcohol January" which is really popular in Finland, I have "no-meat October" every year. The main goal for myself is to shake up my dinner routine a bit and try to find some good veggie recipes I can then use throughout the year. This year I found it a bit hard to start with just basically because time just flies and October was here way too soon, haha. But now I've been rocking my new veggie diet and I am even trying to push it towards more of an vegan diet than a lacto-ovo-vegetarian which I normally do on Octobers (lacto-ovo-vegetarians are allowed to eat egg and dairy products).

So, every October I try to find some new veggie things to try out and this year I was really tempted to try making seitan. I tried it for the first time oevr the summer and I was pretty amazed how good it was. I've always had an impression it's really, well, labour-intensive to make (the economist inside of me couldn't come up with a better expression). But with some advice from my friend Krista and with a little googling, I found out it's incredibly easy. So here's a simple recipe for you:
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Basic seitan

Makes about 12 patties

Ingredients

2 dl gluten flour
1dl soy flour or kikpea flour (gram), I prefer kikpea
1,5dl Water or other liquid
2 teaspoons soy sauce
2 teaspoons chilli or smoked paprika, ground
Pretty much any seasoning you wish, in the ones pictured below I used some tumaric

For cooking stock

1,5l of veggies stock or 2 stock cubes and 1,5l of water
Soy sauce
Balsamic vinegar


Start off by mixing all your dry ingredients (gluten flour, soy/kikpea flour, dry seasonings) in a large bowl. Mix the 1,5dl water with 2 teaspoons of soy sauce on a small bowl. 

Then mix the liquids and the flour together in a bowl and knead. Not a lot of kneading is required though as the gluten flour builds the elasticity up like really fast.

Knead the dough to a longish roll and then cut to pieces  and form to shapes to your own taste. I like making patties.

Next thing you have to do is to cook the patties. My cooking broth was a combination of vegetable stock, vinegar and soy. It's very much recommended to season the broth well as it will give the most of the taste to the patties. So get your stock to a slight boil and drop the patties in one by one. Then let them simmer for about 20 minutes.

The finished product

After cooking, you can also cut some of the "steaks" to smaller pieces: they can be used in multiple ways to substitute meat in sauces and stews! You can freeze seitan and then just thaw it when needed. Freezing should make the consistancy slightly softer.

First time at a flea market as a seller!

Looks like this is turning out to be a very flea market oriented blog, but hey, I guess it's no problem!

Today I had my first experience in actually be a seller at a flea market. Kallio-liike, a neighborhood movement from the Helsinki neighbour Kallio, organized outdoor flea markets in parks during summer. They have broadened the concept and today we saw the first indoor winter flea market. I have to say it was great!  The idea is that the flea market doesn't cost anything for the seller as it normally does but the people can just come and sell whatever they happen to have on. Everything happens either on blnaket on the floor or if someone (a myself) had racks/tables their own, one could use them.

Anyhow, for me, it was a success and I had a blast! I sold almost all the stuff I brough. I basically was only left with my graduation dress but I guess it was too fancy for the flea market after all.