October 2009 Archives

Today I was looking through the recipes in the last issue of Gourmet Magazine (*shakes fist at Conde Nast*), when I read the recipe on Vegetarian Shepherds Pie which called for seitan as one of the main ingredients.

Seitan is an Asian protein-rich, meat-free food stuff made of wheat gluten that is very popular for creating meat substitutes for vegetarian and vegan cooking.

If you are gluten-free for health reasons, such as gluten-intolerance or celiacs disease, or for diet reasons, also very valid, then navigating the world of vegetarian and vegan cookery can be very tricky as it can be very gluten-full.

After reading the recipe in Gourmet tonight, I decided to Google "gluten-free seitan" to see if there are any good gluten-free, meat-free seitan substitutes. And there are. Not packaged to be bought at your local health food store, but here are a couple of sets of recipes for gluten-free seitan to be used in various veggie recipes:

http://stanford.wellsphere.com/healthy-cooking-article/gluten-free-gluten/472515
http://www.meatandeggfree.com/gluten-free-seitan.html

If you have made gluten-free seitan, please comment and let us know what you thought of it.

Photos by Ms. Jen with a Nokia N86.

Sun 10.04.09 - Today Jeremy and Jessica took me to brunch at i gigi's cafe on Western Rd on Hove, Josh Russell and Nik F met us there for a truly delightful brunch.

The food was a fresh riff off the usual breakfast and brunch foods. Each dish was well considered and beautiful as well as tasty. The best part is that each of the servers prepared the dishes on the sideboard right next to us. Fresh. Tasty. Moderately DIY.

Now when is i gigi going to open a Long Beach, Calif. cafe? ;o)

[posted with permission from Black Phoebe :: Ms. Jen, by me (Jenifer Hanen).]