Home Cooking

Seitan Roulade with Spinach, Red Onions and Mushrooms

/ Libby Millier / 1 Comment

Finally. I finally made seitan roulade. Really impressive, posh looking seitan roulade!

I feel like I’ve been waiting my whole life to make seitan roulade for Benj. Ever since we first sampled this king of fake meats many moons ago, I’ve been keen to attempt it at home and impress Ben with a tastes-just-like-meat-but-isn’t treat. Ironically, when asked if there is anything he misses now he’s a veggie, the only thing he says he very very (very!) occasionally longs for is fish. It’s notoriously tricky to replicate fish so I pretty much ignore him and pretend he craves a huge fillet of steak with potatoes and veg (possibly because I think that is what I would miss most?) Hence the constant need to recreate this combination of food in a vegetarian way.

This roulade was a belated birthday meal for him, having received my vital wheat gluten a few days after his birthday. I based the roulade on a combination of the Post Punk Kitchen Seitan Roast and the infamous ‘Seitan O Greatness’ recipe that everyone and their Mum has made.

Apologies but due to time elapsed since cooking and slackness of note-taking during, I am unable to provide a recipe. I’d say it’s more the Seitan O Greatness though with a few modifications (no tomato paste, Worcestershire sauce or cumin, for example.) Once I had made the seitan itself I faced the difficult task of flattening it out enough into a shape suitable for being stuffed and rolled. The dough was really elastic and stubborn and every time I kneaded a section out it would just spring back into the original shape. A LOT of elbow grease was required and I was beginning to think I’d done something terribly wrong as it was looking less and less likely this ball of dough was ever going to be edible. But, I persevered and was eventually rewarded with a submissive rectangle of dough sitting pretty on the counter, waiting for the stuffing to be applied.

I don’t particularly like shiiitakes OR leeks and so chose to use my current favourite tart filling of caramalised red onions, finely chopped mushrooms and lots and lots of garlic and herbs. I also added wilted spinach as I thought it would provide a nice punch of colour amongst all the brown.

Once cooked, I applied the mixture to the dough and spread it all out.

Yummers! I then rolled the dough around the filling and wrapped it up in tinfoil…like a big sweet.

It went into the oven for about an hour, during which time I was obsessively poking forks into it to see what was going on in there. Honestly, the suspense! After an hour it was ‘firm to the touch’ as advised by PPK so I took it out, unwrapped the tinfoil and we looked on in amazement at what had happened. The dough was crisp and crunchy on the inside, a lovely golden brown colour. The dough nearest the stuffing and obviously the stuffing itself was moist and soft, creating a lovely contrast of textures. I sliced it into big, greedy, 2 inch or so wide rounds and placed it proudly on the plates alongside my BEST EVER potato dauphinoise (I added cheese and although technically you shouldn’t, it really took it above and beyond!) and Ben’s all time favourite vegetable, broccoli.

The texture was a little spongy as I think I overcooked it ever so slightly but this was easy to overlook due to the amazing taste! The stuffing infused the actual seitan making it very herby and garlicy which was fabulous. Paired with the potatoes, the broccoli and a big glass of wine, this was a very special celebration meal and I know Ben thoroughly enjoyed it. I am pleased that my first forey into seitan-making was a success and I feel like I started with the trickiest recipe so everything now will be a doddle! In theory. If I did make the roulade again I would make sure to double wrap the tinfoil as I feel it could have held together better, but that’s just me being annoyingly critical. I also think a sauce of some kind would be lovely with this, any suggestions?

I have promised that our next adventure with seitan will be a far trashier one – currently thinking along the lines of seitan ‘ribz’ or buffalo seitan wingless ‘wingz’!

Fish in a tomato sauce with olives (+ a veggie version!)

/ Libby Millier / 4 Comments

Since the end of March (following 5 days of what can only be described as obscene gluttony at Disneyland Paris) I have been on a diet. But not a crazy, impossible-to-follow, ‘Lose 25 lbs in 2 Days!’ diet, an actual healthy eating and exercise plan that is working for me. I know! It’s a miracle. I’ve done every diet under the sun in my 24 years on this earth, the worst probably being the ill-fated Dukan diet which I followed last summer, consisting of a week of only eating meat, yogurt and 2 spoonfuls of Oat Bran a day to keep me regular. I lost weight but I was unhappy, grumpy and most importantly, famished! Crazy times.

My new savour is a little app called My Fitness Pal. Basically you download it to your phone (you can also access it on computers and it updates your account simultaneously on both, very clever) and enter your height, weight, how much you’d like to lose etc etc and it gives you a plan with a certain number of calories to eat per day. You log your food every day and also whatever exercise you do. I am constantly amazed by the almost incomprehensible database of food that MFP holds. You can type in almost any brand of almost any food and someone, somewhere will have logged the calories. Kind souls. You can also create recipes by typing in all the ingredients and how many people it serves and MFP will calculate the calories per serving size. What I love about MFP is the incentive it gives you to exercise! If I’ve eaten most of my daily calorie amount but really want a KitKat after dinner, I know I can go for a little walk, log it on the app and I will be rewarded with an ‘extra’ 100 or so calories to enjoy a treat. Saying that, most days I am coming in under my calories due to increased exercise and making better food choices and I often don’t ‘eat back’ my exercise calories. This is a hotly debated subject on the MFP forums and makes for interesting reading. I find I am losing weight without eating my exercise calories so I’ll probably stay doing that.

I’ve lost 11 pounds since the end of March so I’m really pleased and definately going to continue using the app. I’m not saying it’ll work for everyone but I’ve recommended it to quite a few friends and family and they all seem to love it! It really works for me as I have always found keeping a food diary to be really effective and with MFP, instead of jotting it all down every night in a notepad as I did when I was younger I can update my diary wherever I am on my iPhone.

*I realise I sound like I work for MFP and may be getting paid for this post but I legit don’t, just sharin’ the love!

So there will probably be quite a few healthier, low calorie blog posts coming up from food I’ve been experimenting with to stay within my daily limit. I love that nothing is ‘forbidden’ too, I can eat whatever I want as long as it fits or I do extra exercise to make it fit! I love food and I can’t imagine holding back when it comes to restaurant meals or special occasions and that is why MFP is probably working so well for me. Basically that is my way of saying there’ll still be the odd caloric behemoth on here as sometimes only a deep fried Mars bar will do the job!

*never actually had a deep fried Mars bar but that is the first example that popped into my head. Worryingly.

So, one such low calorie meal was dreampt up by me the other week when I fancied something for dinner that incorporated fish, olives, tomato sauce and a cheesy breadcrumb crust. I could not for the life of me find a recipe that ticked all these boxes so I decided to just wing it. The result was delightful! I also made a veggie version for my darling boyfriend which also turned out surprisingly well.

It was a super easy dish and came together in about 15 minutes, perfect for busy weeknights when all you really want to do is get a plate of food on your lap as quickly as possible so you can watch at least 3 episodes of Dexter before bed. Or is that just us?

I started with my meaty and veggie cooking stations. Does anyone else who cooks for a vegetarian do this? I have one meaty dish, one veggie dish, one meaty cooking utensil, one veggie cooking utensil etc etc all the way down to teaspoons for tasting. Can’t be having any cross-contamination! The basis of the veggie dish was the beautifully anemic fake chicken fillets, courtesy of everyones favourite vegetarian food supplier, Quorn. We both actually really enjoy these, once they have some flavour added to them. They don’t look so hot straight out the oven though let me tell you…

The basis for my one was originally going to be cod fillets but I panicked at the price in Sainsburys and instead opted for two of the finest pollock fillets, about £1.80 which I thought was astonishingly reasonable. I pan fried the fillets with lots of salt and pepper and they looked wonderful, if slightly rugged (I was paranoid they’d stick to the pan with my scant amounts of diet-sabotaging olive oil.)

I then heated up a mixture of chopped tomatoes, tomato puree, onions, garlic, oregano and sliced black olives until it was simmering nicely. I divided the mixture and ladled half on the Quorn fillets and half on the pollock fillets which were laying pretty in two ceramic dishes.

Finally I covered each version with a mixture of breadcrumbed WeightWatchers bread (only 50 calories a slice!) and finely grated cheddar cheese. I baked each dish for about half an hour until the breadcrumbs were browned and the sauce was hot throughout. I wasn’t too fussed on cooking times as obviously the Quorn and pollock was cooked beforehand so it was mainly a case of heating it all through.

We served the baked dishes with cubed potatoes cooked in a tiny bit of olive oil and lots of salt and pepper and oregano which turned out amazingly. Each dish made two generous servings – 2 Quorn fillets for Ben and 1 quite large pollock fillet for me.

These potatoes. Oh my lord.

The verdict? Delicious! The crunchy, browned breadcrumbs with the salty olives and rich tomato sauce worked together perfectly. It was really filling and I was pleased I’d chosen pollock once I found out they were 81 calories per fillet! That, my friends, is a calorie bargain. According to my calculations, one serving of the meaty (fishy?) version (minus the potatoes) was 280 calories. Add in the potatoes and you have a delicious, filling meal for around 450 calories. Obviously you could do without the cheese which would knock off about 100 calories but then it really would just be fish, tomatoes and olives and I think we all deserve slightly more than that. As long as you only use 30 grams of cheddar (and don’t eat another 30 grams while you’re cooking) the dish will remain low calorie.

We heated up the other halves in the oven the next day and we found them to be even nicer as the flavours had all mingled together in quite a pleasing way. Yum!

Nostalgic American Style Pancakes

/ Libby Millier / 2 Comments

Seriously, I know I keep going on about the food we ate in America…but these delights need to be shared!!

One of our favourite parts was the AMAZING  breakfast we had whilst staying at the Homewood Suites hotel on International Drive. A full cooked and continental complimentary breakfast called the ‘Suite Start’, it set us up for the day and meant we didn’t need to eat anything else for a good 5 or 6 hours later. It could quite easily have been 7 or 8 hours later but we force-fed ourselves at lunch in order to sample as many American culinary delights as possible.

Some mornings we had the cooked option, which changed every day…

Sometimes I had raisin whirl bread and various yummy condiments…

And some mornings I just went all out and got pancakes and waffles! Ohhh the calories.

Back to reality…we had some friends stay with us over the Bank Holiday weekend and as they share our passion for Florida I thought it would be fun to surprise them with an American breakfast and make my very first pancakes!

These were so easy to make, I can’t believe I haven’t made them before! The only thing is the pan I used was slightly bowed which caused the pancakes to be oval shaped 😦 Next time (and there will be a next time!) I’ll probably invest in a mould or a tiny saucepan that will produce perfect circular pancakes a la Nigella. I definitely want to be the kind of girl who makes homemade American pancakes all the time!

We teamed the pancakes with super crispy bacon from Sainsburys – £1.40 for 12 streaky ‘USA style’ rashers which produced the perfect crispy bacon that is so prevalent in the US of A. We also made a big batch of scrambled eggs as it was the ‘morning after the night before’ and we all needed something nourishing to repair our poor hungover bodies!

The finishing touch was a big squeeze of maple syrup – purchased in Florida by my parents and bought home to my eagerly anticipating self as a gift. Honestly, the first waft of the sweet, smokey maple syrup and I was transported right back to Florida and the holidays I spent there growing up. Such a lovely feeling.

Check out the spread!

And heres the moral of the story – So excited were we by our authentic American breakfast and the rush of nostalgia it caused that we basically threw caution to the wind…all four of us booked for next year! Vicki and Ian for their ‘Disneymoon’ following their wedding and 14 nights on-site at Disney for us…with 7 nights on I-Drive and Universal to be booked in the coming months. 3 weeks baby!

Only 521 days to go!