Love Sausage and Respect the Law

I get a good amount of flak from meat-lovers about being a vegetarian who likes the taste of meat.  Most of them regard it as the height of folly to decline to eat something which is delicious, and a delusion to try and replace meat for any purpose.  And of course I find more people who are suspicious of the very idea of cooking in the meat-eating camp than among veggos, probably by necessity. 

There are more cogent arguments as well--an ethical, local meat industry is developing, and it's a lot easier to source one cut of beef than a jar of coriander if it's sustainability and cruelty to humans I'm concerned about (it is).  I don't know that vegetarianism is necessarily the most ethical choice all the time, so I try to present it rhetorically to others as a matter of personal preference (it is).  On the rare occasions I actually eat meat, it's the texture that's offputting: impossible not to think of my own body rent and flayed when I'm pulping muscle fibers between my molars. The taste, however, is very nice. 

Now, my partner and I are different kinds of vegetarian.  We both like animals and dislike the thought of eating their flesh, but for the most part he genuinely dislikes the smell and taste of cooking meat.  There are a few things he misses, though--chicken, mainly.  But when I mentioned the idea of recreating the Scottish sausage known as square slice, he perked right up.  This recipe has become one of his favorites, something we both enjoy on a roll or with tattie scones. 

This recipe, then, has at its heart a Vegan Dad recipe for sausage.  The first changes I made to it were to take it further from the Seitan O'Greatness, which I have always hated.  So paprika and nutritional yeast were out, as well as fennel seed and oregano.  For some reason I find that oregano always makes bitter sausages.  After a while the puréed beans dropped out as well.  What I had at this point was a pure wheat gluten log of variable size, prepared with soy sauce, vegetarian boullion, and sesame oil (which always has the effect of convincing my tongue I'm eating meat).  I mix some powdered ginger, garlic, and onion into the flour because they add to the meatiness without adding bulk or moisture. 

Pictured: some seitan. 

Wheat gluten, or seitan, is probably the best meat substitute out there.  Tofu never has quite the right texture, being either too soft if I prepare it or too chewy if I leave it to Asian restauranteurs, plus it's the devil to try to get spices to penetrate to its interior.  TVP only works for dishes that want mince.  Beans and mushrooms are tasty, but they usually have better uses.  Commercial meat substitutes like Quorn can be good, but usually taste like feet.  Seitan is as neutral as bread but takes flavours readily, and it can be prepared with any texture you like (boiled for juicy and soft, steamed for chewy-but-tender, baked for dense) with a minimum of effort.  If you're vegetarian and untouched by celiac disorder, you've definitely had seitan in a commercial veggie burger. 

Around this time we had developed a taste for a certain frozen meal, Aunt Bessie's vegetarian toad in the hole, consisting of a couple sausages in frozen Yorkshire pudding batter in a little tin.  I copied the spices off the back: coriander, nutmeg, thyme, sage, parsley.  I guessed at the amounts and added them to the flour, carefully omitting parsley. 

I started experimenting with other additives besides spices, mainly to cut the rubbery quality steamed seitan can have.  Grated cheese was one of the first things I tried, along with minced fried onion.  The cheese stuck to the foil and created hard little pockets in the seitan, while the onion had the opposite problem and just slid away when the log was cut.  An egg seemed to improve the texture without these downsides.  It was later, when I started making pakoras all the time, that I added a bit of gram flour, which has a distinctive flavour and makes it hold together better.  And of course I'm always looking for ways to put MSG into things, so Maggi seasoning, in both its liquid and cube forms, has been a godsend.  I decided to add TVP on a whim one day and it's been the best decision in the whole sausage-making process. 

Innovations in the mixing stages mainly had to do with the preparation of the TVP and the amount of water.  This part was a total bastard.  Eventually I stopped trying to wing it and measured everything out by weight.  As for cooking, I've not deviated very much from the standard instruction to steam for 45 minutes.

Here, then, is my favourite recipe, tested exhaustively by me.  It's quite forgiving, so I encourage you to experiment and find out what works for you. 

Seitan Square Slice
Prep time: 20 minutes
Cook time: 45 Minutes
Yield: 750 g, two good-sized sausage logs

Spice Mix
    1 teaspoon ground coriander seed
    1 teaspoon ground nutmeg
    1 teaspoon ground ginger
    1 teaspoon onion powder
    1/2 teaspoon cayenne
    1/2 teaspoon black pepper
    1/2 teaspoon garlic powder
    1/2 teaspoon thyme
    1/2 teaspoon sage
    1/2 teaspoon rosemary

    1 1/2 cup (180 g) wheat gluten
    1/4 cup (25 g) gram flour (If you can't find this, leave it out.) 

    1/2 cup/40 g soya mince/TVP
    1 tablespoon sesame oil
    1+ tablespoon butter
    2 - 3 tablespoons Maggi seasoning (or 4 cubes)
    around 1 2/3 cup/400 ml water
    1 egg

Dissolve boullion in 400 ml boiling water, then stir in TVP, butter and sesame oil, and a bit of the spice mix.  Allow to cool to a temperature that won't cook an egg before adding the egg. 

Combine remaining spice mix and flours in a dry bowl.  Turn in the cooled mince mixture and soaking liquid and stir with a fork until well-mixed.  You don't need to knead it, just make sure everything's wet.  Let it sit for a half hour or so in the fridge, then knead if you like. I tend not to, because it's pretty much like squeezing a bunch of oily meat.  The next stage is what determines the density, anyhow. 

Cut the dough into two pieces, and place each piece on a sheet of foil.  Roll up in a short fat log & steam for 45 minutes.  Let it cool until you can handle it, then pop it in the fridge.  When it's cool, it'll be sliceable and you can fry it up or use it in other dishes as you would any cooked sausage. 

Half of this recipe (one log) will fill 500 g puff pastry as sausage rolls.