Who ever said Easter feasts required big, slow-roasted birds? The creative folks behind What the hell does a vegan eat, anyway? featured a gorgeous seitan roulade for their holiday entree.
Like good vegans, they made their own seitan, the old-fashioned way - no store-bought stuff for them! If you're feeling ambitious (and have some time on your hands), the seitan recipe is here.
After making and rolling out the seitan, it was filled with mushrooms and kale, rolled up, and baked for 25 minutes at 350 degrees F. The best part? Instead of twine, they used these cute reusable silicone ties to secure the roulade while it baked. They added some mushroom gravy at the end, which looked great, but I'm sure it tastes delicious plain, as well. Although if you're not gonna eat gravy with Easter dinner, when are you gonna eat gravy? Just sayin', is all.
My dream is that these lovely people will welcome me into their home and adopt me and offer to cook for me every night. But until that happens, I'll just keep featuring their awesome recipes.
In my family we take our Thanksgiving gravy very serious. My father, the primary holiday chef in my parents' marriage, learned the secrets of gravy-making from his mother and has passed them on to me (my sister doesn't have a whole lot of interest in gravy prep). For years now, I known how to create at least half a gallon of turkey gravy (the picture to the right is how much gravy we had leftover after a 10-person meal last Thanksgiving). This skill ensures that there will always be more than enough gravy to extend past the life of the turkey and that the dog will be given gravy on top of her dinner for at least a week after holiday meal is over.
And now I'd like to share some of my gravy making prowess with you. Last year Scott and I made an episode of Fork You devoted to the flour toasting technique that is a vital component of the gravy prep. Two years ago, I wrote a lengthy post describing in detail how to make this gravy. And for those of you who don't want to watch or read, here are my basic tips. Toast two cups of flour in a pan on your stove top until it turns a nutty brown (gives the gravy good flavor and color). Make a pot of stock with the turkey offal and neck. If you are making a vat of gravy to take to someone else's dinner (something I have done) you can make stock with a package of turkey wings from the store.
My family cooks turkey every holiday. Whether it's Christmas, Thanksgiving, Arbor Day, or the day we celebrate the birth of veteran stage and screen actor Mickey Rooney, turkey seems to be what we cook. Everyone loves it, so why not? But there are times I think of doing something different, like cook a ham. This recipe after the jump seems like a great place to start. Just the mention of the maple syrup and mustard and the apples all cooking together in the roasting pan makes my mouth water. And it seems really easy too.
Forget the Tofurkey. Susan, the amazing vegan cook behind Fat Free Vegan Kitchen, has come up with a much more appetizing vegan alternative to the omnivore's turkey dinner. She made Tofu Stuffed with Brown Rice and Mushroom Dressing. The dish has the classic elements of stuffing and gravy, but is missing, of course, the meat. Susan marinates her tofu so that it absorbs some flavor before cooking, but it is pretty clear that the bulk of the flavor comes from what is inside the tofu. The stuffing has rosemary, sage, garlic and onion, along with nutty brown rice and mushrooms. The gravy is thickened with tofu, but has similar seasonings, along with a bit of nutritional yeast, which is often added to vegan dishes to give them an ever-so-slightly cheesy flavor. Her post also includes detailed photo instructions for cutting the pockets in the tofu to hold the stuffing.
Vegan or not - this sounds like an appealing fall meal for any Sunday dinner.
Cook's Illustrated is definitely one of the best resources for any food-related technical questions. They test everything - from ingredients to recipes - exhaustively, so you are basically guaranteed a good result just by following their meticulous instructions. Most of the sections on their website require a subscription, so unless you get the magazine through the mail or register with them, your access to their vast resources will be limited to the few things that they keep in the free section of their site. Fortunately, a great article called Mastering Turkey Gravy is available just in time for Thanksgiving. They talk about equipment, as well as the major components of the dish, before getting down to the recipe and the technique. Their recipe calls for a quick turkey stock, a roux to thicken the sauce and the addition of the pan drippings to get the maximum flavor. Take a look at the whole article before the season ends ad it goes back behind the pay wall.
If chicken fried steak ice cream sounds like a bad idea to you, rest assured that it sounds bad to me, too. If it actually sounds like a good idea to you, I am sorry to be the one to tell you that you are mistaken. In either case, the rather unusual combination doesn't live up to the promise, whatever small amount there is, of its name. The concoction was dreamed up and skillfully put together at Dallas Food, who reported that "Flavorwise, this was hands down the most disgusting ice cream I've ever had the misfortune to taste."
They were going for something that would approximate the flavor of cream gravy, with a thick and rich consistency, but in a frozen form. After all, similar things haven been done with bacon (not necessarily to general success, however). Flavor issues aside, I really think that Dallas Food did a fantastic job putting this together, frying the steak and carefully putting together the ice cream, which was flavored with pepper, thyme and CFS drippings. It's too bad that it didn't turn out to be a winner, but as DF points out, it will be on hand to serve to that "one deserving guest" at the next barbecue.
I can only think of a few food products that sound less appetizing than pork brains in milk gravy - fermented shark springs to mind - but this is certainly near the bottom of the list. The interesting thing to note about this product is its nutritional information. One can, which is about 2/3 cup, has only 150 calories and 5 grams of fat. It also has 3,500mg of cholesterol, which is 1170% of the recommended daily allowance. Yikes!
The weirdest thing about this cardiologist's nightmare of a product is that there must be enough demand to justify canning it. According to this article, it's not uncommon in the South, but it also says that it tastes pretty nasty. I have to ask: is anyone really eating this stuff?
After I found the cooking with your car engine photo-tutorial on Instructables, I did a little more browsing around and found something even more, um, impressive. Yes, this is a recirculating fountain brimming with "a gushing torrent of delicious, piping hot gravy." Roughly 10 gallons of it. What's more, the fountain uses peristaltic action to move the gravy, just like us. Yep, a series of moving rollers pushed that gravy from a stockpot in the base, through a rubber hose and up to a tasteful silver bowl. There's even a video clip of the fountain in action. It's surprisingly loud. Gravy and plywood: always a winning combination.
All week
we'll be bringing you stories of how to win the heart of someone you long for with nothing more than a few comestibles
and a way with a whisk, a chef's knife, or a hot cooktop. Everyone knows the way to anyone's heart is through the
stomach. We'll show you the best, the craftiest, the sweetiest, saltiest, and spiciest ways. You can send the wedding
invitations here.
My gravy has won the heart of many a man. But nothing, to my husband, says love more than this image here: me,
whisking away, creating creamy salty poultrified deliciousness. Even Saveur agrees.
Always, I bring him the first taste, on my spoon procured just for the purpose. Sometimes I'll surprise him, when
he thinks I'm making some mundane meal, a gratin or a soup, I'll get out the chicken stock base, I'll make a roux, and
create bubbly magic. It never fails to make him fall in love with me all over again. Like Saturday night; he came home
from a 12-hour day doing Army Reserve duties and I made him pork chops with gravy.
Everything you need to know
In my family we take our Thanksgiving gravy very serious. My father, the primary holiday chef in my parents' marriage, learned the secrets of gravy-making from his mother and has passed them on to me (my sister doesn't have a whole lot of interest in gravy prep). For years now, I known how to create at least half a gallon of turkey gravy (the picture to the right is how much gravy we had leftover after a 10-person meal last Thanksgiving). This skill ensures that there will always be more than enough gravy to extend past the life of the turkey and that the dog will be given gravy on top of her dinner for at least a week after holiday meal is over. 
My family cooks turkey every holiday. Whether it's Christmas, Thanksgiving, Arbor Day, or the day we celebrate the birth of veteran stage and screen actor Mickey Rooney, turkey seems to be what we cook. Everyone loves it, so why not? But there are times I think of doing something different, like cook a ham. 
All week
we'll be bringing you stories of how to win the heart of someone you long for with nothing more than a few comestibles
and a way with a whisk, a chef's knife, or a hot cooktop. Everyone knows the way to anyone's heart is through the
stomach. We'll show you the best, the craftiest, the sweetiest, saltiest, and spiciest ways. You can send the wedding
invitations here.
Cakes so amazing they'd be hard to cut into
Fruit juice: An invitation to diabetes?
Morbid thoughts? Have a cookie
