ginger seitan

Asian Night

Cat is Japanese at heart - yeah, big surprise - she's a teenager. I think most teenagers these days are wanna-be Japanese, especially in this age of video games, anime and manga.

When Asian Night comes up, she always requests something that is Japanese. Which is fine by me; otherwise I wouldn't even know some of the dishes that exist.

She wanted me to make Shogayaki. Shoga means ginger and yaki means grill or fry. And that is your five cent language lesson for the week. Shogayaki is pieces of pork stir-fried, sometimes with onions, with a ginger sauce. It is served with shredded cabbage.

This is high on the Simple and Quick List as long as you have seitan. You can also use well-soaked TVP pieces. I defrosted and sliced my Tender Cutlets into thin (1/8 - 1/4 inch) strips, coated them with arrowroot (or cornstarch or flour) and stir fried them with sliced onions.

Then I poured on my ginger sauce - garlic, ginger (lots!), sugar, tamari, toasted sesame oil, mirin and sake (I used white wine) - and let it thicken and coat the seitan.

I served this with the traditional shredded cabbage and not-so-traditional sauteed garlic kale. Really good stuff.

Cost Breakdown

seitan, onions: $3.50

arrowroot, oil: $1

sauce, garlic: $2

cabbage: $2

kale: $2

rice: $.50

Total to make 6 servings:

$11.00

GINGER SEITAN PRINTER FRIENDLY RECIPE

baked french onion soup

It is Catriona's Birthday Week - her birthday is on Sunday; she will be 14.

 Time goes by way too fast!

Since it is her birthday week, she gets to choose the menu for this week. That means that I came home with three bags of potatoes from Whole Foods. Mikel might have been Italian in his past life, but Cat was certainly Irish. So, we will be revisiting some food I've blog about already, but that is a good thing. In case you missed it before, you'll have a chance to see it again. That also means that I can tweak the recipes.

For lunch she requested Baked French Onion Soup. I had the hardest time melting the vegan cheese before and I think I've figured out why: my broiler was not on high enough, my food was too far from the flame and I didn't give it enough time to melt. It's like a pot of water - it'll never boil if you watch it. If you've been having the same problem, just step away from the oven!

I used Follow Your Heart for this because that is her favorite vegan cheese (above Daiya!). I cut slices off the block to get it to fit on the bowl and then sliced it into thin pieces. Not so thin you can see through them, but not huge chunks, either. I used three croutons in each bowl to help the cheese stay afloat. It worked beautifully!

I also updated the recipe - add salt when you are cooking the onions (but you can wait until the end - no biggie) and in case you don't want to make your own stock, use 10-11 cups of a good vegetable stock.

Cost Breakdown

onions: $2

bread: $1

cheese: $4

stock (homemade): $1

tamari, wine: $1.50

Total to make 8 bowls:

$9.50

BAKED FRENCH ONION SOUP PRINTER-FRIENDLY RECIPE