The bride wore pleather.

I'm getting hitched this weekend. And then I'm going to New York to accidentally-on-purpose lose my BlackBerry and honeymoon for a week. You're probably wondering, "why would I care about your stupid wedding and what does it have to do with veganized French food?" Well, you care because from this point forward I'm going to be chasing tent rental guys and caterers and 100 people I've never met before and thus will probably not have time to talk about Anthony Bourdain and his tiny, tiny penis.

But I'll be back on Friday the 16th, and I fully expect to come home to an inbox full of your recipes and brilliance, so if I'm not in court for an annulment by then, I'll resume posting as usual.

I shall now destroy and rebuild your appetite in 2 photos or less.

Thanks, To Live and Eat in L.A., for permanently damaging both my corneas and my sex drive. (Although I do love you forever for squaring off with dumbass commenters. You're a more tenacious person than I.)

And just when you thought you'd never be able to eat anything again EVER, Tendron de Soy Curls with Lemon from Vegan Appetite! The original Bourdain recipe calls for short ribs of veal--or any other hunk of viscera he might attempt to fashion into some sort of a prosthetic, as seen above. Those of us who don't need the--ahem--help with such things can use this deceptively simple recipe instead. Soy curls are available via the venerable Food Fight Grocery if your local health food store doesn't carry them (and if they don't, gently remind the manager that it wouldn't kill him/her to stock more vegan alternatives alongside the Happy Ethical Beef Hunks or whatever the fuck they're calling that oxymoronic shit these days). Alternately, you could just use cubed tempeh.

Luckily, this can also be served over noodles, as shown, making it a nice straightforward one-bowl, one-fork meal for those who gouged their eyes out moments ago.

Tendron de Soy Curls with Lemon

Serves 4 generously

2 1/2 cups soy curls
4 cups boiling water (to soak)
1/4 cup tamari
1 tsp onion powder
1 tsp garlic powder
1 tsp poultry seasoning
1/4 cup white wine
1 tsp lemon pepper
1 boullion cube
1 Tbsp Byranna's Chicken Powder
salt and pepper

2- 3 Tbsp olive oil
1 Tbsp earth balance

1 medium onion, finely chopped
2 carrots, finely chopped
14.5 oz can plum tomatoes, drained
1 Tbsp flour
1/2 cup white wine
1 1/2 cups reserved soaking water (or broth)
4 cloves garlic, crushed
bouquet garni
1/2 tsp lemon pepper
2 Tbsp lemon juice
1/4 cup parsley, finely chopped
salt to taste
1 # spaghetti

First thing is to get those curls soaking. Heat your water then add all the ingredients in the upper part of the list. Keep in mind that the curls expand, so use a big bowl. Let them soak for at least a half hour, but longer is better. I wouldn't go overnight, but up to a few hours. Then it's important to squeeze all the liquid out of them that you can. This part of the recipe is the least fun. I usually squish them with my hands and a strainer countless times, then spread them on paper towels and squeeze out even more. No need to be obsessive, but get them as dry as you can. Keep 1 1/2 cups of the liquid.

Heat the oil and earth balance in a large frying pan and cook the curls (in batches if you have to) until they start to brown. Remove from pan and set aside.

If your pan is dry, add another tablespoon of olive oil, then add the onions and carrots. Cook until the onions are translucent. Add the tomatoes, crushing them up as you go. Cook for a few minutes, then add the flour. Be sure to scrape the goodies off the bottom of the pan. Cook another few minutes. This is where this recipe starts to look cool. As the tomatoes break down, the sauce comes together. Add the 1/2 cup of wine and cook until it reduces by half. Add the reserved liquid, the bouquet garni, garlic, lemon pepper and soy curls. Let simmer 20 - 30 minutes so the soy curls pick up more of the flavor. Add the lemon juice and parsley, season to taste with salt and remove the bouquet garni.

Excellence, nostalgia, and the fucking t-shirt debate.

Yeah, that's right. We're excellent, says Where's the Beef. So excellent that now we have an official Excellent rating. Does Bourdain have an Excellent rating? Noooooo. He has a TV-14 rating and a rockin' good case of Irritable Bowel Syndrome. So suck on THAT.

Consequently, in the tradition of passing these things along, I'm bestowing the mighty E upon What the Hell Does a Vegan Eat Anyway and Where's the Revolution, without whom, respectively, this project would have far less seitan and might possibly never have existed.

And speaking of warm fuzzy good things, the illustrious Kittee mentioned whisperings of Hezbollah Tofu down in New Orleans, which makes me want to skip around and whistle with glee, because NOLA is pretty much my unofficial birthplace. My mom was sneaking me into Lafitte's piano bar to hear Johnny Gordon play when I was 15, hiding me in a back corner so no one could see the candlelight on my braces, and on my 16th birthday Priestess Miriam at the Voodoo Spiritual Temple on Rampart Street told me I was going to marry my high school sweetheart--whom I am marrying a week from Saturday. So, just, don't get me started on New Orleans. I'll go all soft and misty-eyed and then a house will fall on me and/or I'll melt.

Now, about this t-shirt drama. To summarize for those of you who actually do work all day and don't procrastinate with internet vegan soap operas, it started when someone on the PPK created a Hezbollah Tofu t-shirt design based on the actual Hezbollah flag. It replaced the buildings and gun with vegetables and changed the Arabic script to say "Hezbollah Tofu." I thought it was rather brilliant, but the Arabic-esque font meant that it was still a little *too* close to the real Hezbollah flag. Then someone else changed THAT design to be even more vegetable-y and replaced the lettering with a plain font.

And, I stand behind it. I think it manages to toe the line between silly wit and a political statement, and I think it does a great job of removing the power of an "offensive" image and molding it into a new image that says something about the absurdity of Bourdain's comparison, the irony therein, and the ability of vegans to walk along the edge and make fun of ourselves.

Others were not so enamored. CafePress refused to carry it because it was "too offensive," despite the fact that they gladly stock sexist, homophobic, and overtly religious (ahem, Quiverfull) offerings. I take more offense at the suggestion that I should obey my husband and have tons of babies to please Jesus than I do at the artistic reinterpretation of a flag, but that, like all things, is subjective--thus the issue, I suppose.

Then I got a few emails, some very condescending, some less so, one of which likened the t-shirt design to a swastika. That, I think, is ridiculous. There's a fundamental difference between overtly wearing a recognizable symbol of hate and displaying a much-changed rendering of a violent sect's flag. I would venture to say that there is as much similarity between the Hezbollah flag and the HT t-shirt design as there is between the Confederate flag and the US flag, but, again, subjectivity.

(Although if you're that concerned with altered symbols of Middle Eastern dissent, I would start by petitioning the mall stores of America to stop selling bastardized keffiyehs to high school hipster scum.)

What this all boils down to, however, is that this is not the hill I'm willing to die on. I have no intention of spending post after post debating Middle Eastern politics and political correctness when this project was created to consist of good cooking and boundless Bourdain snark. And I'm not going to cheat our chosen charity out of donation funds just because people want to argue over a TIFF file. I won't do it.

So here's the deal: if you want a t-shirt with the Hezbollah flag design, please email me and I will send you the file so that you can have your own shirt made of your own volition (though I would suggest Zazzle since CafePress is clearly run by Pat Robertson). And if you're one of the people who openly and vocally objected to that design, please put your proverbial money where your mouth is and create something we CAN market on a broader basis. I don't mind debate and disagreement, but whining without doing shit just pisses me off, and also, I really want to see what you can come up with.

Typing endless paragraphs without even having a big plate of horseradishy seitan to look forward to kind of blows, so I'm going to wrap this up. We shall return with veganized Bourdain goodness shortly.

Lentils Tartare

This time last year I had the extreme misfortune of being dragged along to Les Halles in New York during a business trip. I was a vegetarian then and not quite a vegan, so my dinner consisted of poking dejectedly at about an inch of oil floating atop what I assume was meant to be some version of mac & cheese, but the truly putrid part was the steak tartare atrocity going on around me.

Every time Mr. & Mrs. Tourist would order the stuff, a thoroughly depressed-looking waiter with an affected (probably fake) French accent would wheel out this Cart of Culinary Doom, pull various hunks of death from its drawers and cabinets, and construct something that attracted every single one of the approximately 76 flies in the poorly ventilated dining room. I couldn't decide who deserved the most pity--myself, the cows, the ripped-off tourists, or the out-of-work actor who had traded his Broadway dreams for a white apron and a phoney accent. Probably all of the above, and maybe even the flies too.

Which is why I was so giddy when Erin from Vegan Homemade submitted this redemption song of a recipe. It's Lentils Tartare, which means I wasn't lying to you when I said we'd diversify our little seitan-fest, and its flavor comes from a myriad of things that Bobby-aka-Jacques didn't have in his squeaky Death Cart.

And also, hey Anthony? If your "signature dishes" are things that waiters can mix together while Betty from Ohio watches unimpressed, I'm pretty sure the jig is up.

Lentils Tartare

1/2 lb (about 1 1/4 cups) lentils (see note)
2 1/2 cups water
2 Tbs Dijon mustard
2 tsp ketchup
1 tsp miso
1 tsp vegetarian Worcestershire sauce
1/4 tsp tabasco sauce
freshly ground black pepper
1/4 cup canola oil
1 ounce Cognac (see note)
1/2 small onion, finely chopped
2 ounces capers, rinsed
2 ounces cornichons (gherkins), finely chopped
4 sprigs of flat parsley, finely chopped
1 tsp toasted nori flakes, large pieces torn smaller
1/2 tsp kosher salt

1. Place lentils and water in a pot. Bring to a boil, and boil for 2 minutes. Turn down the heat, cover, and simmer for 10 minutes, stirring occasionally, until lentils are tender and water is absorbed. Let stand for at least 10 minutes, then place in refrigerator to cool. Let cool completely.
2. Meanwhile, place the mustard, ketchup, miso, Worcestershire sauce, tabasco sauce and black pepper in a large bowl and whisk until well mixed. Slowly whisk in the oil, then add the Cognac and mix again. Fold in the onion, capers, cornichons, parsley, nori flakes and salt.
3. Add the lentils to the mustard mixture and mix well using a spoon or your hands, breaking up any clumps. Spoon the mixture onto chilled plates and form into disks using a ring mold. Serve with toasted bread points.

Serves 6.

Notes:
- You can use any type of lentil, depending on your desired results. I used red in an attempt at beef-like color, and they end up being pretty well mashed. Black, green or even brown lentils will hold their shape better and have a firmer bite. If using those, you may need to add more water and increase cooking time.
- Hennessey, Remy Martin, and Martell brand Cognacs are suitable for vegans, probably along with other brands.
- The original recipe calls for an entire onion, so if you like raw oniony goodness, go for it. I think the half onion is a nice ratio.
- This would probably work nicely as a firm dip with thick crackers or veggie crudite. And unlike it’s original steak counterpoint, it will hold well in the fridge for leftovers.

Seitan a la Ficelle

You know that scene in "Rosemary's Baby," also known as The Greatest Scene in Any Movie Ever Except For the Montage at the End of "She's Having a Baby," where a post-labor, post-tranquilizer Mia Farrow shuffles fearfully into the "witches'" apartment with a big knife, looking for her kid, and all those Brooks Brothers-catalog old people start chanting "Hail Satan"?

It's pure unadulterated genius. It's what gets me through long lunch meetings--imagining that, at any moment, the dull droning banker-type and his wife will burst from their mahogany chairs and start praising the Dark Lord with their manicured fists in the air. No scene has ever been more unintentionally hilarious, even when I'm sober.

So just think of the fact that I'm posting another seitan recipe not as an unhealthy obsession with the glutenous wonder (just bear with me, celiacs, I'mma take care of you, I promise), but as the complex and delicate construction of our own little Rosemary's Baby homage. That, or, as serial contributor tofu666's PPK username suggests, he really is working for the devil. Anyway, now I want a long blue nightgown and a big knife. And some of this here Seitan a la Ficelle.

Seitan a la Ficelle with Horseradish Bechamel

Seitan a la Ficelle (p. 122 of the Les Halles cookbook)

8 oz. seitan, cut into long slices
canola oil

8 baby carrots, peeled
8 baby turnips, peeled
2 leeks, white part only
1/2 onion studded with 4 cloves
bouquet garni
salt and pepper
1 tbs. soy margarine
water
1 cup veg stock

sea salt (fleur de sel)
1/2 cup Cornichons
Dijon mustard

Bechamel Sauce with Horseradish (below)

Preheat the oven to 350F.

Put all of the vegetable in a large pan that will fit in your oven. Add the veg stock and enough water to come up halfway on the leeks. Add the bouquet garni and soy margarine. Add salt and pepper to taste. Over high heat, bring the water to a boil, place the lid on the pot slightly ajar, and cook for about 20 minutes until the liquid has almost evaporated. Take the lid off, and place in the oven while you make the seitan.

As always, you can make your own seitan for this, but in this instance, we used the packaged type and sliced thinly in long strips. It was quickly stir-fried in a wok with canola oil.

On the plate, place the seitan in the center and position the vegetables around it. Pour some of the leftover broth from the pan around the seitan and veggies. Serve with sea salt, cornichons, mustard.

Bechamel Sauce with Horseradish (p. 254 of the Les Halles cookbook)

The bechamel sauce with horseradish is straight ahead, just whisk in as much horseradish as you like into the bechamel along with the salt, white pepper and nutmeg. We used about 2 tbs. for the 2 cups of sauce. For serving, we loaded the sauce into a squeeze bottle and let everyone decorate as they liked.

1 1/2 oz. of soy margarine
1 1/2 oz. of flour
2 cups of soy milk (rice milk, better than milk, etc)
salt and white pepper
pinch of nutmeg
2 tbs. freshly grated Horseradish root

Melt the soy margarine over medium heat. Add the flour and stir with a wooden spoon to combine with the soy margarine. Reduce the heat and cook for a few minutes, but don't allow the flour-soy margarine mixture to take on any color. Slowly add the soy milk to the roux with a whisk and mix until smooth. Season with the salt and white pepper and add the nutmeg and the horseradish. Heat on low until the sauce is thick enough to coat the back of a spoon.

Pot au Feu. Except, you know, not gross.

It's not often that a Wikipedia article makes me gag. In fact, I don't think that's happened since Wikipedia confirmed that Katie Holmes had been sperminated by Tom Cruise (or some frozen Scientology version thereof), and even then it was less of a gag and more of a wistful cry for Joey Potter to climb back into Dawson's bedroom where she belonged. But Pot au feu, the Pacey Witter of the culinary world, lures you in with its fancy name and its winsome promises of vegetables and then completely ruins your day with the following sentence:

"Cooking cartilaginous meat in the stew will result in gelatin being dissolved into the broth. If the stew is allowed to cool, the broth may turn into a jelly, resulting in an interesting texture. Allowing the stew to cool also allows for the removal of excess grease which forms a layer at the surface."

Gross gross GROSS. All I can think about when I read that is the wiggly goo that collects at the top of a can of cat food. Or Aunt Bethany's cat-food Jello mold in National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation. Neither of these things are the product of a good kitchen, Confidential or not. (Oh SNAP!)

So it's a good thing that Carla from The Year of the Vegan replaced said cat food goop with veganized Pot au Feu, which looks like the kind of warm, simple-but-tasty, steaming deliciousness that your mother would have made your begrudging 15-year-old self as consolation when Joey broke Dawson's heart yet AGAIN.

This is a two-parter; the Pot au Feu recipe follows the seitan recipe. Those with wheat allergies could make this with just the tempeh and more mushrooms. Carla also notes:
"I made the seitan in the mid afternoon and after it was made used a cup of the cooking stock to poach my tempeh. I then put half the seitan in the fridge for another day, cut up the rest, (and the tempeh) then kept these bits in the 2 C of the stock I was planning to use for the pot au feu later. During the pot au feu recipe when it calls for the seitan / tempeh and broth to be added I just added them all straight from this pot together."

Pot au Feu

Beefy Seitan
Serves 4

Seitan –

¾ C Mushroom Stock – room temperature
2 T Soy Sauce
1 T Tomato Paste
½ T Blackstrap Molasses
½ T Liquid Smoke
1 t Marmite
2 cloves Garlic – grated
1 C Vital Wheat Gluten
1/3 C Nutritional Yeast
½ t Onion Powder
½ t Garlic Powder
½ t Paprika
¼ t Black Pepper

Broth –
3 C Mushroom Stock – room temperature
¼ C Red Wine
2 T Soy sauce
1 T Tomato Paste
½ T Liquid Smoke
1 t Marmite
1 t Onion Powder
1 t Garlic Powder
½ t dried Thyme
½ t dried Oregano
½ t Black pepper
1 Bayleaf
1 whole Clove

In a small bowl whisk together the stock, soy sauce, tomato paste, molasses, liquid smoke, marmite and garlic.
In a large bowl mix the dry ingredients, then add the wet and mix well with a fork.
Once well mixed knead on a clean dry board for about 5 minutes to develop the gluten.
Divide into 4 pieces, shape into a patty and rest while preparing the broth.
To prepare the broth, mix all ingredients in a large saucepan.
Add the seitan pieces to the cold broth, cover and bring to the boil.
As just boiling turn the heat down very low to a just simmer and cook for 1 hour, turning the seitan every 10 minutes
After an hour turn off the heat and allow the seitan to cool in the broth. Remove bayleaf and clove.
Store in the broth in the fridge until required.

Pot au feu
Serves 4

1 T Olive Oil
2 Portobello Mushrooms – cut into 1/8 wedges
1 C Shiitake Mushrooms – cut in ¼
1 Onion – cut in ¼, end on
4 Cloves
4 Leeks – green ends trimmed, washed and halved lengthwise, end on
½ Celeriac – cut into 1” chunks
2 Carrots – cut into 1” lengths
2 Medium Potatoes – cut in ¼
1 Bouquet Garni
½ Recipe “Beefy Seitan” – cut in 1” chunks (or 2 C Store Bought)
4oz (1/2 packet) Tempeh – steamed then cut in 1” chunks
2 C Seitan Cooking Broth*
3 C Vegetable Stock
3 C Water (add more to just cover as required)
¼ head Cabbage – 4 wedges
Salt and Pepper to taste

In a large soup pot over medium heat, heat the oil then sauté the mushrooms for 5 minutes until they start to give up their liqueur.
Place 1 clove in the smooth side of each ¼ onion.
Add the cloved onions, leeks, celeriac, carrots, potatoes, bouquet garni, seitan, and the tempeh to the pot. Pour in the cooking broth, stock and water to just cover. Add extra water as necessary – you want bits just poking out.
Still over medium heat, cover and bring the pot to a simmer. Uncover and cook for 25 – 30 minutes until the root vegetables are just tender.
Add in the cabbage and cook for a further 10 – 15 minutes until soft. Season to taste.

To serve, remove bouquet garni, cloves from the onions, ends from the onions and leeks, then present pieces on a serving platter with broth in a jug and allow people to help themselves, or divide everything evenly up between 4 deep plates. Have plenty of crusty bread on hand for dipping in the broth.

*if not making your own seitan sub 1 ¾ C Mushroom Stock, 2 T Soy Sauce, 1 t Liquid Smoke and 1 t Marmite for the cooking broth – though making your own and using the broth will be tastier.

_______________________________

In other news, we now have a Flickr pool!

Name 5 things cooler than a Hezbollah Tofu t-shirt.

See, you couldn't, could you? That's because nothing cooler EXISTS. And, right now, neither do the actual t-shirts.

Here's the thing--we can't be talking such a big game and then go around wearing lame-ass t-shirts that just say something like "tofu ruullessss bacon is grooossssss" with the website address. And all the cutesy "give peas a chance" shit has already been appropriated by PETA, which, you know, we're not even going to go there. So we need something with awesome yet not in-your-face graphics and achingly witty text.

Surely you cannot expect me to do this all by myself, particularly given that my Photoshop skills begin and end with airbrushing the odd PMS zit out of a vacation photo. So I need for the brave among you to offer up your mad skills and whip up something fantastic to plaster across various merchandise.

The ultimate goal of this, of course, is to raise funds for the actual printing of the 'zine that Hezbollah Tofu will become, since the perky Baptist lady who runs the print shop on my corner probably is not going to see veganism as a pro-bono cause. Email your awesomeness to hezbollahtofu@gmail.com or just post it in the thread currently up and running on the ppk.

Also, did you hear? This was the spank heard 'round the world. Or at least the vegan culinary world. Today: winning Endless Simmer; tomorrow: making Bourdain serve as Isa Moskowitz's sous chef.