Vegan Hühnerfrikassee ( vegan chicken fricassee)

This is a dish, that's very common all over germany but I think it's supposed to have frensh originis. The omi-recipe is very easy: Cook a chicken, chop the meat, make a roux with the chickenstock and add the meat and some vegetables (canned peas, canned asparagus, canned mushrooms, carrots...).
But well, this is a vegan food blog, it's winter and I want to use fresh vegetables, that are in season right now.
The best thing about this is, that there's a vegetables, that's called the poor mans asparagus and it's in season:
Yeeesss, you're right it's black salsify. Salsify is one of the old german vegetables, that were quiet common in the past but that seams to disappear from the supermarkets. The roots are very long and thin.
It's easy to preapare. You just have to peal it, slice it and cook it. It's traditionally served with a roux and eaten with cooked potatoes just like most germans like their white asparagus the frugal way. If your're pealing it you should think about wearing rubber gloves because it has some juice in it that colours your hands in a rusty brown, which is quiet hard to get rid of. You should also quit transfere the pealed root into a pot with water or into a bowl with a bit of lemon juice because it oxidates very quickly.

Here's the recipe:

Vegan Hühnerfrikassee

Ingredients:

one piece of vegan soy chicken, chopped ( I found this at the chinese supermarket. Frozen tofu or tempeh would be a great substitude.)

one big carrot, chopped

one small parsley root, pealed and chopped

1/4 of a medium celariac, pealed and chopped

1/2 leak, chopped

1 medium siced onion, chopped

1 big salsify root, pealed and sliced into bitesiced chunks

6-8 mushrooms, sliced into six parts

2 bayleaves

2 dried shitakes

aprox. 1/4 cup of very light soy sauce

1/3 cup of nooch

3 tbs of canola oil

1 tbs of sesame oil

1/3 cup of magarine

6-8 tbs of wheat flour

salt pepper and nutmeg to taste

1. Roast the chopped vegetables alon with the canola oil.

2. Add enough water to cover it. Throw in the bayleaves and shitakes. Boil for aprox. 15 minutes.

3. Add the vegan chicken or tofu or tempeh , the salsify the soysauce and nooch and cook until the salsify is tender.

4. Fry the mushrooms in a dry pan util golden brown and add them to the stock,

5. Drain the vegetables and fake chicken and save the broth. Remove the bayleaves and the shitakes.

6. Make a roux out of the flour and magarine and stir in the stock.

7. Add the solid parts and season with salt, pepper nutmeg and sesame oil.

8. Served with cooked rice. I prefer basmati but it's your own choice.

Königsberger Klopse

This dish is originated in east prussia (the eastern part of the German Empire before WWII) and it's named after Königsberg, a town which is now part of russia and named Kaliningrad, but it's a common staple all over germany. The klopse are normaly made of ground veal, stale bread, onions and anchovies. That's a lot of cruelty inside of these meatballs but I took the recipe for chickpea cutlets as an inspiration and created a recipe without anything related to small disgusting smelling fish or cute baby cows. The meatballs are simmered in a mixture of vegetable broth,white wine, an onion and some spices. After cooking the meatballs are removed from the broth and the broth is thickened with a "Mehlschwitze" (magarine and flour) and enriched with lovely, vinegary capers. Then the meatballs are going back into the enriched sauce and are served with simple cooked potatoes or plain rice. The combination of the soft meatballs, the rich sauce and the strong flavoures of the capers is just outstanding. It's such a perfect combination, that this dish even made me like capers when I was a young boy.

Königsberger Klopse

Ingredients:

For the meatballs:

1/2 cup of mashed chickpeas

1/2 cup of mashed firm tofu

1/4 cup of fine breadcrumbs

1/4 cup of chickpeaflour

1/2 cup of glutenflour

1/2 cup of nooch

2 tbs of vegetablestock powder

2 tbs of olive oil

1/2 medium siced onion, finely chopped

salt and pepper for seasoning and maybe a little bit of light soysauce or vegemite if you want it to be really hearty

For the cooking liquid:

1/2 a pot of vegetablestock mixed with two glasses of white wine

1 medium siced onion, pealed and spotted with 6 - 8 cloves

2- 4 bayleaves

4 allspices berries

4 juniper berries

6-8 whole peppercorns

For the sauce:

1/2 cup of capers pickeld in vinegar ( not the dry and salted ones)

1/3 cup of magarine

aprox. 1/4 cup of wheat flour

salt and pepper for seasoning



1. Mix all the ingredients for the meatballs until you've got a thick dough and mix in the gluten flour.

2. Make little, plum siced balls.

3. Bring the stock to a boil with all the other cooking liquids ingrendients, lower the heat to a temperature between low and medium. The luquid has to simmer slowly all the time. You have to avoid a rolling boil because it could make your lovely little meatballs fall apart and you'll end up with a soggy mix of mashed fake meat and stock.

4. Add the meatballs and cook them for about 1 hour to 1 1/2.(Try one of them after one hour...).

5. When completly done, drain the meatballs into a colander and save the remaining cooking liquid.

6. Heat your stockpot again and add the magarine. Wait until it has melted. Make a roux with the flour and some of the cooking liquid.
Season with salt, pepper and capers, add the meatballs and serve with cooked potaotes or rice. Some people seam to like pickeld beet roots with this dish but this is quiet unknow to me, maybe I've got to try it.

Himmel un Aed (Fried vegan bloodpudding with mashed potaoes topped with apples and onions)

Vegan WHAT?????

Yes, you're right this is vegan bloodpudding and it's so delicious.
The idea of a vegan bloodpudding came to my mind, when I tasted the iron drops my daughter had to take after she spent a few weeks at the hospital.
Well they tasted like blood and were vegan and the idea was born.
Now a few month later I just had some vegan iron pills but that could not stop my to do a little experiment. The kind of blood pudding a wanted to create first was "Panhas", wich is traditionally made out of the broth you've got after cooking some sausages on slaughter day (Ok, this sounds really really weird on a vegan blog but hey this is an all vegan recipe of course.). Some of the sausages tend to burst and you've got lots of animalparts you won't like to use for something als so this is, when the meat jumps into the game. You at some blood and bind everything with some buckwheat flour and you've got panhas.
Well, unforunately I couldn't find whole and bleeding fake pigs at the supermarket so I
had to do a little bit of inventing and substitution to do and here is the recipe:

Vegan Panhas

1 cup of firm tofu, mashed

1/2 cup of mashed cooked chickpeas

1/2 cup of mashed smoked tofu

1 1/2 cup of homemade vegetable stock, which should be heavy on leeks and onions and include some dried shitakes

1/2 cup of canola oil

1 big onion, chopped

2 tsp of hing

3 tbs of dark soysauce

2 tbs of vegetable stock powder

5 iron pills, grind them with a mortar

a good hand of chrused walnuts

3/4 cup of buckwheat flour

a pinch of salt

some pepper

1. In a big pot, fry the onions with the oil, the hing and the walnuts and add the tofus and chickpeas.

2.Add the stock along with the shitakes and all other ingredients eccept of the buckwheat flour and grind them with a food processor.

3.Put everthing back and add the buckwheat flour.

4.Cook on medium a while contantly stiring until it thickens a lot.

5. Pour into an oiled mold of your choice and let it cool down inside of the fride for a few ours.



Himmel un Aed

Irgendients:

3-4 medium siced potatoes, pealed, cooked and mashed along with some magarine and nutmeg

1 big apple, pealed, deseeded and sliced

1 big onion, sliced into rings or strips

some magarine for frying the apples and onions

a few pieces of vegan panhas

salt and pepper for seasoning

1. Fry the apples and onions with athe butter until caramelized and season with salt and pepper.

2. In a non-stick pan fry the panhas until it's crispy on both sides. ( You won't need any oil because the pnahs is fatty enough.)

3. Put the apples and onions on top of the mashed potatoes and arange the fried panhas near to it.

St. Martin, Weckmänner and Martinsgans (Sweetbreadguys and my very own vegan goose)

This post is dedicated to one of my alltime favourit german celebrations: "St. Martin".
First I have to say, that St. Martin is a catholic holiday and it seems to be a very german holiday, which is very popular were I live.
The story of Martin of Tours goes back to the fourth centuary. He first was a roman soldier and then changed his life and became a bishop but this is not the important part of the story.
The most important thing is, that he shared food with poor people and cut his coat into two halfes to share it with a homeless man.
At St.Martin the kinds walk trough the streets with selfmade laterns and sing special songs.
When the singing is over, they walk from house to house sing other songs and get sweets, fruits, nuts and baked goods like the kids do on halloween in the USA.
One of these baked goods is called "Weckmann" or "Martinsmann", which is a sweet and yeasted dough shaped like a man.
I wanted to bake a vegan version for my son that turned out a bit dry but still was delicious because of the icing and the roasted almonds on top.
At sunday a wanted to prepare the traditional lunch for the next sunday after St. Martin, wich is a goose with some festive side dishes.
My attmep on a fake goose was a giant yuba fake chicken style roast stuffed with homemade seitan, dried plums saked in wihte wine, a sliced apple and some pieces of raosted chestnuts. As side dishes I made selfamde potato dumplings for the very first time in my life and some blanched and fried brussel sprouts.
The dumplings and brussel sprouts turned out nice but the yuba-roast was a fail because I used a differnt kind of yuba which was soft without soaking but came out hard and kind of inedieable.
The stuffing was still nice. It's just equal amounts of pealed and sliced apples, dried plums soaked in wihte wine and roasted chestnuts. Maybe you want to try this istead of a breadstuffing for your christmas dinner.
Here's the recipe for the "Weckmänner".

Weckmänner

(makes two monster ones or 4 normal guys)

Ingredients:

500 g of wheat flour

250 ml of soy milk or any non diary milk plus some soymilk for brushing before baking

125 g of magarine

150 g of sugar

1 cube of fresh yeast

a pinch of salt

a few raisins for the eyes

1 cup of confectioners sugar

1-2 tablespoons of lemon juice or water

aprox. one cup of thinly sliced roasted almonds.

1. Mix flour, sugar, magarine, salt, soymilk and yeast and knead until you've good a nice dough.

2. Let it sit for about 1 -2 hours.

3. Shape it like little humans and stick some raisins into the face for the eyes and brush with a little soymilk.

4. Bake at 180° C for about half an hour.

5. Let it cool. Make an icing by combining th confetioners sugar and lemon juice or water and cover the cooled guys. Sprinkel with the roaste almonds.

6. Wait until the icing is solid and enjoy.


Homemade Potato Dumplings

Ingredients:

8 big and starchy potatoes

some salt

a pinch of nutmeg

3/4 of potato flour or potato starch

2 tablespoons of chickpea flour

1. Cook half of the potatoes until they are done ( that's 30 minutes counted form the point where you put the heat on, 20 minutes from the point when the water is boiling.

2. Peal the cooked and the remaining ram potatoes and grate them vary finely.

3. Mix in the flours, some salt and the nutmeg and mix well.

4. Form about 8 -10 fist siced dumplings.

5. Bring a big pot of salted water to a boil, reduce heat to medium and simmer the dumplings for about 25 minutes. (The water should never be boiling because the dumplings whould fall apart.)

6. Strain the dumplings and you're done.

Mofo Day 7: Vegan Sauerbraten (Seitan-Roast marinated in vinegar with a special rasin flavoured gravy

This was my lunch today. It's called "Sauerbraten" (sour roast) and it's a roast, that's marinated in a mixture of vinegar, wine, chopped vegetables (Suppengrün) and a mix of different whole spices. The spice mix normaly includes pepper, bay leavs, cloves, mustard seeds, and allspices.
Everything I had in my pantry was pepper, mustard seeds and bay leaves but I think this was still fine. The raw roast is marinated for 4-2 days depending on which kind of meat people use. It varies from beef (which is the most popular way) to horsemeat and even pork, but pork is very unusual.

I also always wondered why the people today hate horsemeat or the meat of dogs and cats, like some asian cultures like to eat and enjoy their beef pork and chicken without even thinking about the way those animals are threated. It's always like "Uhhh, horesemeat, it's so digusting, I could never eat a horse but hey, I like my ground beef so much much, as I doesn't look at me. In my opionion as someone who has studied philosophy, which was also one of the main reasons, why a became a vegan, that sometihng that's called "Mitleidsethik" in german (something like mercy ethics, I don't know the real scientific term for that). People just care for the persons and animals of know identity. If they don't have to see the farmers in africa, who grow their tobbaco, if they've never met the poor workers in central ameica who harvest their cocoa, if they've never seen all the cows, chicken and pigs, how they threat them and how they slather them in a industrialized way, they just don't care, because their dog and cat and their horse is fine a the farmer around the corner gets paid enough to have a good life.

But let's come back to the preparation of the roast.
After marinating, the roast is fried and then baked along with the marinade until it is done. Then the marinade is strained and the gravy is, as always, prepared out of the remaining liquid. The gravy has to be sweetened, because is based one vinegar, which has even concentrated after baking and tends to be very sour. People use different kinds of sweeteners, such as sugar beet molasses, different kinds of jellies and jams, sugar, honey, raisins, dried fruit (mainly dried plums) or even different kinds of gingerbread such as "Aachener Printen" (a very hard kind of gingerbread which is even often vegan) or "Soßenkuchen" (means gravy cake, a kind of dry gingerbread from eastern germany, which is just made to use in gravys and sauces).
I chose raisins and sugar beet molasses, because those ingredients are very traditional and they perfectly fit the cuisine of my region. The sauerbraten is often served along with "Rotkohl" ( red cabbage), applesauce and potatodumplings or just cooked potatoes. I chose the cooked potatoes because thr rest of the components of this meal were still enough work to be done before lunch.

That made me think about the amount of work, that's done in the kitchen to prepare a festive weekend meal for the family. Everyone is always so enthusiastic about all the work the italian and frensh grandmas spent in the kitchen. Everyone is so impressed by the artisan preparations of pasta. But has anyone every talked about all the work, chemistry and knowledge, that's behind all those german potato dishes and other carb sides? I think that traditional german cusine can be as simple and as creative and educated as every other traditional cuisine in the world. But ok, that's an argument about the possibilities and past of german cuisine and things have changed after WWII as we got richer and lazier. People around here now tend to buy premade things and canned vegetables and often they even eat ready-to-serve-meals and when they got richer and the interest in cooking grew, the germans started to discover other cuisines and slowly lost all their knowledge about their own food.

The "Sauerbraten" turned out nicer than I thaught it would. The flavour is as close to the original as possible but I want to experiment a bit with the texture, which was like nice, meaty and chewy homemade seitan but the orginal is like the tender pieces of beef you may have inside of a stew. Maybe something based on the recipe for chickpeacutlets, like i made for the "Vegan Rinderrouladen" would fit the consitency better. This kindof fake meat wouldn't be could for marinating but you could still bake it along with the marinate and if you'd serve it along with the same sauce I think, that this would change the flavour so much and it wouldn't be so much work.
Here's the recipe:

Vegan Sauerbraten

for the homemade seitan:

1 kg of wheat flour


for the marinade:

300 ml of vinegar

150 ml of vine

a diced carrot

a smal chunk of diced celaric

a smal piece of diced leek

1 tbs of whole peppercorns

2 bayleaves

1 tbs of whole mustard seed

(maybe some cloves and allspice)


for the seitan cooking liquid:

1/2 cup of soysauce

2-3 tbs of nooch

1 tbs of vegetablestock powder

2 tsp of vegemite

some oil to fry the seitan


to finish the gravy:

one to four tbs of sugar beet molasses or any other of the sweetners I metioned

a small hand of raisins

1/2 cup of magarine

the amount of starch you want depending how thick you want to have your gravy


1. Mix the flour with aprox. 500 - 600 ml of warm water until you have a soft dough. Cover with cold water and set aside for 2- 4 hour to alow the gluten the work.

2. Knead the dough inside of a colander under running water until all the starch has gone and you've got a nice bouncy ball of gluten.

3. To make the marinade put all the irgredients for the marinate into a pot and heat it until it boils. Set aside until it's cold.

4. Put the raw gluten and the marinade into a plastic bag and let the seitan marinate over night.

5. At the next day put the seitan out of the plastic bag and safe the marinade inside of a pot.

6. Take and new plastic bag and mix the cooking liquid irgedients along with the same amount of water. Put in the seitan, seal the bag and cook in inside of a big pot with some water for about one our until the seitan is done.

7. Put the lquid to the marinade and fry the seitan until it's crispy one the outside.

8. Place the seitan into the mix of cooking liquid and marinade and bake it isinde of the oven at 180 ° C for baout one hour. Keep turnig the seitan from time to time to make sure, that the surface doesn't burn.

9. After baking, put out the seitan and slice and and strain the liquid trhough a collander. Put away the vegetables pieces and spices and bring the strained liquid to a boil inside of a smal pot.

10. Put in th raisins and sweetener and disolve the starch in some cold water. Mix in the starch and stir the gravy until it has thickened. If it's to sour for your taste, add some more sweetener.

11. Serve with red cabbage, applesauce and cooked potatoes or potato dumplings. The recipe for the red cabbage is here.

Vegan Rinderrouladen

This is my version of a traditional german dish called rinderrouladen. It's made of chickpea cutlets with some extra umami flavour, which are rolled out and filled with mustard, raw onions and thinly sliced pickeled cucumbers. My hometown is known to produce a famous and special kind of mustard called mosterd in our lokal dialect (mustard is usually called senf in german). This is the reason this dish is so famous over here. Some people go crazy with their mosterd. If you say something like "I want to buy some "senf"", they will look at you like they are going to kill you and say: "We don't have any. We just have mosterd."
I served the rouladen with some pealed potatoes boiled in salted water but most people like to eat them with potato dumplings.



Vegan Rinderrouladen


Ingredients:

For the rouladen:

1 portion of chickpea cutlet dough, leave out the herbs and stuff and add two teaspoons of vegemite, 1/3 cup of nooch and two teaspoons of liquid smoke

about 4 tsp of mustard

1 onion, finely chopped

4 medium siced pickeled cucumbers, thinly sliced

1 onion, roughly chopped

1 carrot, roughly chopped

1 tsp of whole peppercorns

1 tsp of juniper berries

2-4 dried or fresh bayleaves

2-3 tbs of canola oil

1 glass of red wine

2 cups of vegetable stock

2 tbs of cornstarch (potato starch will work as well)

some salt for seasoning


For the red cabbage:

4 cups of shreddered red cabbage

7 tbs of sugar

2 tbs of vinegar

2 appels, pealed and cut into chunks

salt and pepper for seasoning



1. Roll out the chickpea cutlets in a square shape until 1 cm. Cut them into 4 squareshape pieces.

2. Spread about one tespoon of mustard on top of each cutlet, sprinkle with some of the finely chopped onions and top with the sliced cumbers.

3. Roll them up and fix with two toothpicks.

4. Add the oil the a oven save pot and fry the rouladen until they are cripsy on every side. Add the onions and carrots and fry them for antother two minutes.

5. Add the spices, the wine and the stock and put evrything into the oven for about 40 minutes at 200 ° C.

6. Turn the rouladen around after half of the time has passed.

7. When the rouladen are ready, put them out of the pot and drain the rest throug a siff, saving the luqid.

8. Boil the liquid in a pot. Disolve the starach in some cold water. Add the starch to the liquid. Simmer everything until it is as thick as gravy.

9. Put 3 tablespoons of the sugar and the appels into a pot, and caramelize them.

10. Add the rest of the cabbage ingredients along with a bit of water and cook on medium high heat until the cabbage is tender. ( For about 30 minutes.)

Kohlrouladen (German Cabbage Rolls)

This is a nice and savoury autumn dish made of filled savoy cabbage leaves, stuffed with a TVP based filling.




Kohlrouladen

Ingredients:

10 savoy cabbage leaves, cut the stalks of

1/2 cup of firm tofu, pressed and mashed with your hands or a fork

2 medium siced oinions, diced

1 cup of TVP, soaked and drained

1/2 cup of rice (you could use basmati, short grain, pre boiled or what ever you have on hand because it will get overcooked and mashy anyway)

2 tbs of soy sauce

2 tsp of liquid smoke

aprox. 1/2 cup of nooch

salt and pepper for seasoning

2-4 cups of vegetable stock

2 tbs canola oil



1.Blanch the cabbage leaeves for 1-2 minutes and cool under running water.

2.Combine all the other ingredients eccept of the 1 1/2 oinions, the oil and the stock to make a filling.

3. But about a small hand of filling on top of a cabbage leave.( The amount of filling varies from leave to leave because they tend to have differnt sices) Wrap the sides around the filling and roll it like you would do with a spring roll or something.

4. In a oven-save pot, roast the remaining onions with the canola oil until the look a bit burned.

5.Put the cabbage rolls on top of the oinions and try to place same so tightly, that there's no space left between them.

6.Put a plate on top of the rolls, to prevent them from falling apart during the cooking.

7. Cover the cabbage rolls with the stock and put a oven-save lit on top.

8. Put them in the oven for aprox. 2 hours at 160 °C.

9. Serve with cooked potatoes.

Goulasch

This is a recipe for goulash, a dish with hungarian roots (the hungarian name is pörkelt), that has been adapted by german cooks and is a common staple for sundays lunch. I don't post a recipe for the dumplings now, because I made them from a (vegan) package. I will give you a recipe some time (you could just make bigger siced gnocchi, they are quiet the same). You could also eat this with pasta or you try some of mihls dumpling recipes.




Goulasch

Ingredients:

2 cups of big siced tvp chunks

3-4 red bell peppers, cubed

2 big onions, roughly chopped

2-3 cloves of garlic, finely chopped

3-4 tbs paprikapaste

1/4 cup of tomatopaste

1 can diced tomatoes

1 dash red wine

2 tsp liquid smoke

2 tsp vegemite (or marmite)

3-4 tbs canola oil

salt and pepper for seasoning



1. Soak the TVP in boiling water for ten minutes.

2. Heat the oil in a non-stick or cast-iron pan an fry the onions, garlic and TVP until they have nice burned dots.

3. Add the cubed pepper and fry for aprox. 5 minutes.

4. Add the tomato- and paprikapaste and roast for a minute.

5. Add the wine and the rest of the ingredients along with a bit of water and simmer on low heat for about 15 minutes or more.

It's a good idea to prepare the dish one day ahead and reheat it at the next day because it will taste better when reheated.

Gyoza

Gyoza are japanese, panfried and steamed dumplings. I filled them with TVP and cabbage and they are just delicious.


Gyoza

Ingredients:

1 package gyoza dumpling skins

Filling:

ca. 1/2 chinese cabbage, cut into thin strips

1 hand of TVP, soaked in boilng water for 5 minutes and drained

1 big onion, diced

3 cloves of garlic, diced

1/2 cup nutritional yeast

3 tbs soysauce

2 tbs mirin

2 tbs canola oil

pepper for seasoning


dipping sauce:

6 tbs soysauce

3 tbs rice vinegar

1 tbs mirin

1 tsp sesameoil flaouvered with chili

1 clove of garlic, diced

1 piece of fresh, ground ginger, as big as a thumbnail

ground peel of one lemon

pepper for seasoning


1. Heat the oil in a non-stick-pan and fry the cabbage, the oinions, the garilc and the TVP until it looks quiet roasted. Season with the remaining filling-ingredients and the filling is ready.

2. Put one teaspoon of the filling on top of a dumpling skin and brush the frame of the skin with a little water. Fold the edges over the middle. It should now look like half a circle.

5. Press the buttom of the gyoza down on your cutting board and try to shape the edge to make it look more authentic and to seal it.

6. Fry the buttoms of the gyoza in a non-stick-pan until they look golden brown. Pour in half a cup of water and cover with a lit. Let them steam for 5 minutes. After this time has passed the liquid should have gone and the buttoms of the gyoza should be even more crispy than before.

7. Combine the irgendients for the dipping sauce in a little bowln and have fun.

Spinach Lasagna

This is my standrt recipe for spinach lasagna.

Spinach Lasagna

Ingredients:

1/2 package dried vegan lasagna pastry (250g) green or plain

a hand full of freozen spinach (defrosted)

for the tvp sauce:

2 onions

1 carrot

2 cloves of garlic

1 hand full of tvp (the kind that looks like ground meat, also called "soya mince" at my local indian grocery store)

3 tbs olive oil

about 6 tbs of tomatopaste

2 cans of chopped tomatoes

a dash of red wine or some water

some basil

salt and pepper for seasoning


for the bechamel sauce:

125 g of magarine or 3/4 cup of canola oil

3/4 cup of nutritional yeast

2 tsp mustard or mustard powder

1/2 cup flour

1/2 litres of soymilk

a pinch of nutmeg

salt and pepper for seasoning


1. Soke the TVP in boiling water for aprox. 5 minutes.

2. Heat a non-stick-pan with the oilive oil an sweat the finely chopped onion, garilc and carrots.

3. Drain the TVP and try to press out as much moisture as you can.

4. Ad the TVp to the pan and roast intil it gets golden brown.

5. At the tomatopaste and fry it for 30 seconds.

6. First at a the wine and allow the alcohol to evaporate then ad the canned tomatoes.

7. Simmer on low heat for 10-20 minutes and ad the basil. Season with salt an pepper.

8. Heat the magarine or oil in a smal pot.

9. Stir in the mustard and the nurtional yeast.

10. Carefully ad the flour until everything looks like a firm dough.

11. Quikly stir in the soymilk.

12. Season with nutmeg, salt and pepper and allow it to thicken on low heat, until the sauce has the cosistency of pancake batter, while doing this stir frequently to prevent the sauce from burning at the bottom of the pot.

13. Now start to put one layer of tvp sauce and bechamel sauce at the bottom of a casserol dish. The next step ist one layer of lasagna layer, then one layer of tvp, bechamel and spinach. Repeat until your casserol dish is nearly full. Top with one layer of pastry and the rest of the bechamel sauce.

14. Bake the lasagna at 200 °C until the surface has a nice golden brown colour.

Vegan Schwerma

This is the veganized version of a classical lebanese Sandwich.
You could you various kinds os saitan. I normaly use the a make the old fashioned way, kneading a flourdough und running water.
You could also substiude an easy tahinbased-sauce for the soy-yogurt-sauce.
The salad would get more authentic if you ad some pickels and mint.

Juu's vegan Schwerma

Ingredients:

4 pieces of pita-bread

Irgendients for the raosted saitan:

ca. 300 g seitan cut into thin strips

1 onion cut into thin rings

3 tbs sesameseeds

2 tbs paprikapowder

1 tsp powdered garlic

1 tbs instant vegetable stock powder

pepper, salt, and chili powder for seasoning

2-3 tbs canolaoil for frying

Irgrdients for the salad:

1 read bell pepper

2 medium siced tomatoes

1/3 cucumber

Ingrients for the soy-yogurt-garlic-sauce:

1 1/2 cup plain soy-yogurt

1/2 cup canoalaoil, flaxseedoil or oliveoil

2-4 big cloves of garlic, or more or less depending on your taste and on you plans for the next day

salt and pepper for seasoning

1. In a non-stick-pan, roast the sesame until it stars to smell nice an gets a golden brwon colour. (Be carefull not to burn it.)
   
2. Ad the canolaoil, saitan and oinions and roast until nice and crispy.
   
3. Add the spices and roast for an other 1-2 minutes. If the saitan seems too dry after yo've added the spices ad a bit oil until it looks nice and shiny.
   
4. For the salad, cube the vegetables and mix well..
5. For the garlic-sauce, finely chop the garlic and ad to a food-processor or blender along with the soy-yogurt, the oil an blend until totaly nice an smooth. Season with salt and pepper
   
6. Wrap your favourite combination of salad, saitan and sauce between a piece of pitabread and enjoy.
   

Tofu-Schnitzel with german panroasted potatoes and krautsalad

Tofu-Schnitzel with german panroasted Potatoes and Krautsalat



While don't bein satisfied by the kind of vegan Schnitzel, which you can buy in stores here in Germany, I tried to create my own recipe and succeded after 3 trials.
Inspiration came from this blog entry http://justbento.com/handbook/johbisai/poached-frozen-tofu-fried-frozen-tofu-cutlets .
I changed the recipe a bit and converted the orgininal cutlets into breaded "Schnitzel"



Tofu-Schnitzel with german panroasted potatoes and krautsalad

Tofu Schnitzel


Ingredients:

1 piece firm tofu ca. 400 g freezed and defrosted

for the stock:

2 carrots

2 onions

1 bulb of garlic

1 tbs of olive oil

1 tbs tomatopaste

2 bay leaves

1 glas wine or sherry

some salt an pepper for seasoning

2 tsp of aseofetida, hing or whatever you call it

1 small piece of konbu-seaweed or one small bag of instant, vegan dashi-granulees

for the coatig:

1 cup of breadcrumps

1/2 cup of chickpeaflour

2 tsp tomatopaste

some salt and pepper for seasoning

2 tbs of nutritional yeast

1 package of instant, vegan dashi granulees

2 tsp of mustard or mustard powder

some water

the amount of oil, that you need to fill your pan for deepfrying


1. Cut the tofu into slices. You can decide how thick you want them to be.

2. Roughly chop the vegetables and roast thme until they get some nice bruning-marks.

3. Ad hing, tomatopaste and spcies and roast for one minute. Pour in the wine and half a litre of water.

4. Add konbu or dashi.

5.Cook the mixture for 10 minutes, cur down the heat to very low and ad the frozen tofu slices. Poach the slices for 20 minutes.

6. While the tofu is poaching mix all ingredients for the coated (not the breadcrumbs) with some water until it looks like a thin cakedough.

7. Spread each, the coating mixture and the breadcrum on one plate an spread ist nicely.

8. Take the cliced tofu out of your stockpot an try do dry the surfase with some papertowel.

9.Coat the sliced tofu with the coating and the breadcrumbs.

10.Deepfry the tofu-schnitzel on each side until they turn golden brown.

11. Defat the schitzel with some papertowels and you're done.


Bratkartoffeln (german panfried potatoes)

These poatoes called Bratkartoffeln are a tradional staple all over Germany. Everyone likes them and there are lots of recipes for them. Some traditional recipes call for thick cubes of bacon or want you to fry the potatoes in lard but I think, that even the most die-hard-german-omnivores around here would not use lard for these. If you want them to be a bit smoky you could at a bit of liquid somke oder some smoked paprika to them.

Ingredients:

2 hands of medium siced potatoes

2 medium siced oninions

2 tbs of canola oil

salt, pepper and some caraway seeds for seasoning


1. Boil the potatoes along with some salt for 20 minutes or less.

2. Drain the cooked poatoes thruogh a siff and let them cool down to room temperature. (You may want to cook them in advance of use some leftover potatoes to cook this dish in less time.)

3. Peel the cooked potatoes or leave them unpeeled and cut into medium thin slices ( 1 to 0.5 cm).

5. Peel the onions and cut them into very thin rings.

6. In a non-stick or cast-ironpan heat the oil and and the caraway.

7. Ad the slices potatoes an onionrings.

8. Fry until golden brown and try to turn them around as littel as you can because otherwise they may fall a part and you end op with some oily, crunchy,semyfried mashed potatoes and that's not what you want.

9. Season with salt and pepper and arrange one a plate.