CARBONNADE À LA FLAMANDE (BELGIAN SEITAN STEW WITH DARK BEER)

Inspired by all the Eat the World (maybe my next challenge after MoFo) participants I stumbled upon this Belgian recipe when I was looking for a recipe to use up some Steamed Red Seitan from Viva Vegan. Seitan is one of our favourite things at the moment. We hadn?t attempted it before Viva Vegan and most of the premade seitans from the shops look slimy and I could never bring myself to buy it. This hearty Belgian stew gets flavour from caramelized onions and dark beer (something Mike would not be denied once he saw the recipe). When it comes to beer in Germany, vegans are lucky. The German beer market is sheltered from the rest of the world beer market by the German brewers' adherence to the Reinheitsgebot ("purity order") dating from 1516. According to which the only allowed ingredients of beer are water, hops and barley-malt. After its discovery, yeast became the fourth legal ingredient. For top-fermenting beers the use of sugar is also permitted.  Therefore there are no animal by-products added or used during the beer making process, yay and um totally gross to all the other animal beer makers out there!!!. Vegan safe beer here everywhere and lots of it!

Serves 2-4

Ingredients

3 tbsp olive oil

400g seitan, cut into thin strips

1 large brown onion, chopped

1 tbsp light brown sugar or natural sweetener

2 tbsp unbleached all-purpose flour

1 cup dark beer (We use Lammsbräu Dunkel)

1 tbsp molasses

2 tsp Dijon mustard

2 tsp white wine vinegar

1 tsp dried thyme

1 bay leaf

1 cup vegetable stock

Salt and freshly ground black pepper

¼-½ tsp brown rice vinegar to taste (Optional ? I added this as I found the sauce was too sweet so I used brown vinegar to mellow it out)

Directions

1.

Heat 1 tbsp of the oil in a large skillet or saucepan over medium-high heat. Add seitan and cook until brown on all sides, about 8-10 minutes. Set aside.

2.

Heat remaining 2 tbsp olive oil in a large saucepan (to make life easy I used the large sauce pan I browned the seitan in) over medium heat. Add onion, cover, and cook until softened, about 5 minutes.

3.

Stir in the brown sugar and cook, uncovered and stirring often, until the onion is brown and caramelised, about 10 minutes. Add the flour and cook, stirring, for 1-2 minutes to remove the raw taste. Stir in the beer, molasses, white wine vinegar, thyme and bay leaf. Mix this through and then pour in the stock, and season with salt and pepper. At this stage taste and add brown rice vinegar if the sauce is too sweet.  Simmer, stirring occasionally, until thickened, 10-15 minutes.

4. Add the seitan and simmer until the flavours are blended, about 10 minutes. Remove the bay leaf and adjust the seasonings (with salt, pepper and brown rice vinegar). Serve hot with noodles, pasta or roasted potatoes. I served this with Cumin Fried Potatoes (but next time I would just serve it with pasta as recommended by Robin)

Vegan MoFo 2010 Day 4 recipe comes from:

Vegan Planet: 400 Irresistible Recipes with Fantastic Flavors from Home and Around the World

by Robin Robertson

This post uses material from the Wikipedia article Beer in Germany.