Excellent article on Formulating Vegetarian Foods. Learn what tempeh, seitan and quorn are, and what ingredients are sometimes needed to complete a ‘meat analog”. Some of these these ‘meat simulations’ sound much worse than the real thing.
“Quorn is the processed cellular mass obtained from the filamentous fungus, Fusarium venenatum, mixed with a binder, usually egg white or whey protein. It has a meat-like bite, mild flavor and a fibrous structure that resembles chicken muscle tissue.”
A large portion of my meals are vegetarian, but not because of any environmental or spiritual reasons. The variety of greens, funghi, and veggies one can get these days is pretty amazing, and they really do deserve to be eaten as the main focus of a meal, not just as a boiled afterthought plopped next to a slab of meat. I made a veggie spread the other night and had it with some Pilsbury biscuits (sorry no photo of this one – it was too hot, and I was too hungry).
I had some heirloom squash, tomatoes, okra, peppers (green and ancho) and herbs (basil and chives) from the farmer’s market. I sauteed some cut mushrooms in some butter and a little soyu, chopped up everything else. When the mushrooms were almost brown I put in the okra, then the squash, then the tomatoes and peppers, in that order, since thats the order that they cook. When the peppers were barely sweated, I took half of the cooked ingredients and pureed them in a processor. Then everything went into a bowl with the chopped herbs. The idea here was to have a base of the mixture of flavors as a paste, binding the individual chopped veggies. This would have been good as a dip too. Next time I’ll make sure I have some spinach as an extra binder. It might improve the grey color of the spread as well.