Friday, September 21, 2007

Black Pepper, Red Wine & Lemon Sage Seitan and Green Beans


September 009

I’ll be honest, this was a pretty easy meal to put together.
It was one of those meals where you reach for something in the fridge and work with all the randomness around you – in this case:

• a scoop from the ton of spaghetti squash that I roasted the night before
• a couple slices of Joanna’s chicken style seitan that I had baked over the weekend
• some of the 2+ pints worth of cherry tomatoes on my kitchen table I’d been snacking on
• fresh lemon sage my boss had given me
• green beans from the crisper needing using
• always stocked stuff like garlic and black pepper &
• red wine I had previously opened…

and you find a way to merge it all together and not have to stand over the stove..

For the seitan and green beans:

I heated canola oil in my stainless steel pan, laid down the ¼ inch thick seitan slices, sprinkled them with a decent amount of freshly ground pepper and then after lightly browning them a couple minutes in, I added a small splash of red wine.

I left it on that side just about a minute, and then flipped, added 1 cup of chopped green beans, a clove of minced garlic, a spritz of oil if desired, a couple dashes of pepper and sea salt to the entire dish, and cooked an additional 2-3 minutes to lightly brown the seitan, stirring the green beans.

I then add some more wine and a about ½-1 tablespoon of water if you want the beans cooked more (I like mine with crunch) and 1 tablespoon of chopped lemon sage, and lower the heat a little bit. Cook until desired doneness, I cooked mine another 1-2 minutes.

Crazy directions, but a quick, well flavored meal. I really am trying to write down more recipes.

~
The spaghetti squash was simple microwaved and then adorned with a good helping of the roasted cherry tomato sauce. This is a sauce that I eat on pasta, grilled tofu, tofu scramble, whatever - and Publish Postis ideal to make this time of year when tomatoes are still in season and you're able to comfortably use the oven once again. Sometimes I use whole cherry tomatoes and let them explode, sometimes I chop them - it's nothing original, just a simple, traditional sauce.

For the roasted cherry tomato sauce:
I chopped up my cherry tomatoes (approx. 2 cups of a mix of colors, with half a chopped green tomato thrown in) and threw them in a glass baking pan with 1 tablespoon of olive oil, 2 cloves of minced garlic, a handful of chopped basil, and pinches of crushed red pepper, sea salt and black pepper.

I cooked them at 400F for 20-25 minutes, stirring three or four times.

10 comments:

Anonymous said...

looks totally delicioso!

Ria said...

I bought green beans yesterday because your blog inspires me to eat more of them!

Mikaela said...

The roasted tomato sauce sounds great great. It's always nice to have another way to use cherry tomatoes - thanks for the recipe :)

aTxVegn said...

What a beautiful plate! It looks delicious.

Melisser; the Urban Housewife said...

Mmm, it looks so good!

erica said...

If I'm not mistaken, your plate looks like the Italian Flag. A really delicious Italian flag.

Emilie said...

I want to go home and make this right now. The roasted tomato sauce sounds perfect...it's always so hard to not just eat fresh in-season tomatoes as is because they're such a treat. I have to remind myself that using perfect tomatoes to cook with is a major treat too--fresh made tomato sauce will always taste best in september!

MeloMeals said...

Looks and sounds awesome..

roasted tomatoes are the best!

Kumudha said...

Such a wonderful plate!

The pictures of the vegan fare in your blog is so good.

Anonymous said...

I have a thing for roasted potatoes so those lemon sage and rosemary ones sound devine.