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.

Introducing Comment of the Week

From now on, in order to improve the quality of my comments section, I'll be posting the best ones in a weekly roundup of the very best of the wit and wisdom of readers of this blog.  First up, this week's entry:

let's pretend I have a tumblr

Lately I've been feeling a little like it was time for another of the periodic stylistic shakeups that we go through in our lives, so I started outlining the kind of themes and roles that I aspire to in my dress, based on Russell T. Davies' essay about pretending.  Davies, you may recall, is the creator of the initially warmly welcome (but later deeply mortifying) David Tennant series of Dr. Who.  [EDIT: Actually the man from that link is a different Russell Davies. My apologies for accusing him of responsibility for Love & Monsters.]

I thought I'd say a bit about the things I pretend from day to day.  A couple of sartorial constraints inform my choice of fantasy roles: I like to keep a lot covered (if only technically); I tend to wear browns, greens, and golds; I like flat-soled, lace-up boots and long coats; and I'm quite messy and disorganized.  And I want to be desirable--not necessarily desired, but maybe like an acquired taste.

Hippie
In truth, I am a bit of a hippie--I'm pacifistic, left-leaning, and my standards of personal hygeine are relaxed.  Only the passage of years and the development of the internet prevent me from really joining any kind of social movement.  "Hippie" as a style, though, covers a lot of ground.  Let's say it's round wire-frame glasses, flowing cotton prints, Indian influences, hair, and sandals.

Witch
My first association with a witch these days is Anthy from Revolutionary Girl Utena.  Anthy is Ishtar, re-interpreted as a devil in a newer patriarchal myth structure, but to my mind a witch isn't so much a force of nature (a la S6 Willow) as a woman who leverages a bit more personal power and fearsomeness than would generally be considered acceptable to get what she wants (a la Granny Weatherwax).  I find this image of the unregenerate scary spinster to be somewhat romantic.  So: Fluevog witch boots, black dirndl skirts abbreviated to the low calf, that whole 19th-century librarian vibe.

Amy Pond
The newest Dr. Who makes the next-newest Dr. Who look shameful and silly.  One of many reasons for that is the character of Amy Pond, who is some kind of goddamn sexual tyrannosaur.  Did you see the Comic Relief special?  The contents of Amy's panties nearly caused her men to become permanently lost in time and space.  That's not even mentioning the power of Pond's crack or her Pandorica Box.  On account of being so fucking foxy, Pond basically clomps about in a man's shirt or sweater, a short skirt, colored nail polish, and Converse.  Like the 80s with flat hair. 

Flapper
The meaning of this iconography, like any of the sexualised roles I've listed, is fraught.  There's the romance of the sexual revolutionaries: Louise Brooks, Zora Neale Hurston, Josephine Baker, Tallulah Bankhead--but all these women were subjected to terrible abuse and exploitation because of their sex. The twenties was this period of incredible sexual objectification and subjectification of women, not unlike today.  Unlike today, the silhouette is boyish instead of hyperfeminine: dropped waist, longish skirts; tight hats with little to no hair visible; sculpted-heel mary-janes or t-straps.

Pre-Raphaelite
Another artistic/fashion movement which was about glorifying and exploiting sexy women in equal measure.  Long cotton-lawn gowns or tunics, tight sleeves.  Velvet if you absolutely must. 

Gunne Sax Girl
It's a sort of 1970s interpretation of the Laura Ingalls Wilder look, with lace and calico aplenty.  Prairie Underground (aside from having the perfect name) is currently producing some fine pieces in this idiom (albeit not in calico).  Occasionally Free People as well.  I can't quite afford either.

memento mori
A bunch of my fashion life has been spent orbiting goth--trying to dress as near as I can without falling in.  It's worth interrogating what it is about goth I find cool, and what it is I find embarrassing.  Goth is a look which is all about details, proportions, lines, with colour taken out of the equation entirely.  For that reason, it's a good place to start a journey into fashion.  And because of that, there's something adolescent and unsophisticated about it, as well as retro in the mortifying way that anything from your early high school years can be.  What I think of goth as being is all about D-rings, but what I want it to be is distressed Victoriana. 

Daria
Sometimes, you just need to look like you're Not Trying.  You can't do the big shop in all your finery.  That's when Daria is my fashion icon.  I hardly need to say, but the look is prescription glasses, longish skirts, sturdy low boots, and sensible outerwear. 

Kabuki
This would be David Mack's Kabuki, the complex pre-Alias tale of a cyberpunk agent's psychological journey.  I used to be a Japanophile, but now Japan and I are just good friends.  Similarly, I used to regard cyberpunk as a dystopian future, rather than the dystopian present and/or a dystopian retro 80s style.  Still, there's a goodly amount of this retro-future-present in my day-to-day style: think Black Milk. Shiny tights, sinuous cyber seams, Japanese influences.

Elf
My elf aesthetic is all about practical gear for the forest, made from the forest.  Legolas or Link.  Pixie hoodies, ragged-edge jersey skirts, pocket belts.

Snake

Snake?

SNAAAAAAKE!
Like Naked Snake and The Boss, I'm about having a camo index of 98% while still sporting military and Red Commie influences. 

Wonder Woman pin-up
This one has very little to do with the rest, but it's been relevant to my life since I moved to Scotland and am trying to live here as an American.  When I'm out and around, I want to be a cheerful, helpful, 1940s American in a smart uniform handing out Marshall Plan candy bars, not Ugly American Neoliberalist.  Coincidentally (perhaps) Wonder Woman is the MAC theme this spring.  There's an absolute wealth of 1940s retro style about, you're probably familiar enough with it.

I feel like I'm honing in on what I like and why, as a result of this exercise. There's a militaristic/anti-militaristic thread, a sort of natural or environmental theme, and the idea of death and decay.  Also anything with a nipped waist.