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One day I looked at my bag of besan on the shelf, besides my bottle of gluten flour, and wondered: can you make besan seitan? It turns out that Burmese people make something named "Shan tofu" which is actually more like polenta. There's a cousin concept to it in Ethiopian cuisine named "butecha", where they use it as an egg replacer on vegetarian fasting days, and it's a thing in India too. It the south of France they make it into Panisse: they cut it into fingers that they deep fry and eat like French fries.
I had made shan tofu before: It's kind of a labourious process. It had been quite a while so I decided to try it again.
I went for the more traditional method, which has you soak the besan overnight, which diminishes the "powdery" flavour of the flour. I had to throw away my first batch because I let it soak for too long, then I stupidly separated the top liquid from the sedimented sludge ahead of time, which exposed the sludge to oxygen, then I had to delay by another day due to Life interfering, and then mold set to it. It seemed to have fermented, which could be an experiment for another time?
I started another batch which I let soak for 6 hours. It separates into a liquid phase and a sludge phase, you boil the liquid for half an hour, then add the sludge back to it, stir it strongly for another 10 minutes, pour it into a container (like a cake or bread pan) then you let it set overnight.
I put in half a teaspoon of kala namak to make it taste eggy (and some turmeric to make it more yellowy). In the end, even that half-teaspoon (for a mere two cups of besan) was not quite enough to make it egg-like, but it was still tasty on toast even if a little "powdery", though not as much as if I hadn't soaked it, the step that most recipes skip. I had it with avocado/tomato toast and it was tasty.
In the evening, F wanted some protein with our vegetable course but didn't want the plain shan tofu, so we decided to bread it. We were out of bread crumbs, but we had a box of "southern bbq" No Name shake n' bake mix, so we breaded shan tofu cubes in that.
Parenthesis: I'm not sure if you're familiar with "Fondue Parmesan", I think it's a Québec food item, or maybe it's just more of a 1980s thing that's disappeared? Basically it is a kind of cheese blend, some of it parmesan-style, which is breaded. You can buy it in supermarkets in a package of four little 50g blocks, and you just bake that in the toaster over for 10-15 minutes before service. It's savoury, not quite melty unless you overbake it, and it's breaded. It's very tasty breaded fat.
So my breaded shan tofu greatly reminded me of fondue parmesan. It still has a noticeable besan flavour, the breading was waaayyyy too salty (it's originally supposed to flavour raw chicken I guess), but I was like "wow, this can be the base for a vegan, guilt-free fondue parmesan." Dear reader, I shall endeavour to try to make that in the future with ordinary bread crumbs and tweak the flavour, until I have a runaway success I can publish in my imaginary vegan cookzine.
Other modifications I want to make to my besan: add mustard powder, garlic powder and maybe liquid smoke to the blend. The kala namak didn't quite take, but I think mustard powder might be just the ticket. (I also want to make a blend with other flours, like gluten or corn, but that's going into gambling territory...)
I had made shan tofu before: It's kind of a labourious process. It had been quite a while so I decided to try it again.
I went for the more traditional method, which has you soak the besan overnight, which diminishes the "powdery" flavour of the flour. I had to throw away my first batch because I let it soak for too long, then I stupidly separated the top liquid from the sedimented sludge ahead of time, which exposed the sludge to oxygen, then I had to delay by another day due to Life interfering, and then mold set to it. It seemed to have fermented, which could be an experiment for another time?
I started another batch which I let soak for 6 hours. It separates into a liquid phase and a sludge phase, you boil the liquid for half an hour, then add the sludge back to it, stir it strongly for another 10 minutes, pour it into a container (like a cake or bread pan) then you let it set overnight.
I put in half a teaspoon of kala namak to make it taste eggy (and some turmeric to make it more yellowy). In the end, even that half-teaspoon (for a mere two cups of besan) was not quite enough to make it egg-like, but it was still tasty on toast even if a little "powdery", though not as much as if I hadn't soaked it, the step that most recipes skip. I had it with avocado/tomato toast and it was tasty.
In the evening, F wanted some protein with our vegetable course but didn't want the plain shan tofu, so we decided to bread it. We were out of bread crumbs, but we had a box of "southern bbq" No Name shake n' bake mix, so we breaded shan tofu cubes in that.
Parenthesis: I'm not sure if you're familiar with "Fondue Parmesan", I think it's a Québec food item, or maybe it's just more of a 1980s thing that's disappeared? Basically it is a kind of cheese blend, some of it parmesan-style, which is breaded. You can buy it in supermarkets in a package of four little 50g blocks, and you just bake that in the toaster over for 10-15 minutes before service. It's savoury, not quite melty unless you overbake it, and it's breaded. It's very tasty breaded fat.
So my breaded shan tofu greatly reminded me of fondue parmesan. It still has a noticeable besan flavour, the breading was waaayyyy too salty (it's originally supposed to flavour raw chicken I guess), but I was like "wow, this can be the base for a vegan, guilt-free fondue parmesan." Dear reader, I shall endeavour to try to make that in the future with ordinary bread crumbs and tweak the flavour, until I have a runaway success I can publish in my imaginary vegan cookzine.
Other modifications I want to make to my besan: add mustard powder, garlic powder and maybe liquid smoke to the blend. The kala namak didn't quite take, but I think mustard powder might be just the ticket. (I also want to make a blend with other flours, like gluten or corn, but that's going into gambling territory...)
