Nicole Is Cooking

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Veganomicon is a recently published vegan cookbook by best-selling vegan cook book authors Isa Moskowitz and Terry Hope Romero. If you google a bit, you can find test photos from all the recipe testers they had help from along the way. I finally picked a copy up after the holidays and have flipped through flagging the pages with recipes I want to try.

One day after work last week after work I decided to give the Chickpea Cutlets a try. These are treated as an equivalent to tofu, tempeh and seitan and can be used as an entree or sandwich filling. It does not take nearly as long to make as seitan so it is nice when you don’t have the time. I try to also limit my processed soy consumption so it is nice to have another alternative (it is pretty inexpensive compared to what you will buy at the store too!).

The ingredients are staples if you do a lot of veg*n cooking- chickpeas, olive oil, wheat gluten, bread crumbs (plain is recommended but I only had Italian and no bread to make any), vegetable broth (you can use water), soy sauce, garlic, lemon zest and some spices (thyme, paprika and sage).

First, you mash the cooked chickpeas and oil together so there are no whole chickpeas remaining.

Then you add the remaining ingredients. Knead the mixture for about three minutes. Strings of gluten will begin to form when it is ready. This was a little hard to capture in a photo. Essentially, if you pull the dough with your thumb as shown below you will see the dough form small strings.

Divide the dough into four portions and shape it into about a 4×6 rectangle. You can either pan fry them in some oil or bake them. In a pan, they should cook until lightly browned on each side and firm to the touch (6-7 minutes per side). They can be baked at 375 degrees (Fahrenheit) for about 20 minutes on one side and 8-10 on the other again until browned and firm.

I opted for frying.

My oil appeared to be a little to hot at first though.

In the end, all was well though.

I decided to have one with some sauteed butternut squash…

…that I mixed with the Green Beans Deluxe that I had left over from lunch the day before with Fantôme Chocolat at The Vegetable Garden (a fabulous meat free Asian inspired restaurant in Maryland’s DC suburbs).

The cutlet was interesting. The gluten (I think) gives it an interesting chewiness. I think I will have to eat this one more time before I decide how I really feel about it. I will have it again though (unlike the vegetarian sausage I picked up on a shopping trip the same day we went to Veggie Garden… those I am not fond of). In the end, it was a fairly good meal.