Guest Blogger: In Vegetables We Trust – Panko and coconut fried seitan and mushrooms

The very charming Alex has been kind enough to contribute a post from his lovely blog called In Vegetables We Trust. You can catch Alex on Facebook, or Twitter and be prepared to be impressed. Welcome back Alex!

If you ever wanted some photos of seitan looking freakishly like meat, there’s one just sitting on this page, if that freaks you out (it does me a little) then use homemade seitan, it doesn’t look half as realistic as commercially produced stuff and its still super tasty. For a gluten-free option dice up tempeh and steam, then use as the seitan in this recipe and either use all desiccated coconut or use gluten-free bread crumbs instead of panko.

Ingredients:
Enough vegetable oil to fill a pan about 2 inches up the sides.

1 tin of mock duck/seitan, cut into generous chunks
1 cup button mushrooms
5 tbsp tamari
1/4 tsp red pepper flakes
1 stalk lemongrass, ends chopped off, bruised with rolling-pin, outer layers removed and then finely chopped
2 tsp fresh finely grated ginger

For the dry dredge:
1/3 cup corn flour seasoned with salt, pepper, a pinch cayenne pepper and 1/4 tsp garlic powder.

For the batter:
3/4 cup full fat coconut milk
1/2 cup cornflour
1 tsp baking soda

For the crumb layer:
1/2 cup panko bread crumbs
1/2 cup desiccated coconut

Method:
Place the seitan and mushrooms in a bowl and toss through the tamari, red pepper flakes, lemon grass and ginger, cover with cling film and allow to marinate for about an hour. Mix together the ingredients for the dry dredge in a shallow dish, and whisk the batter ingredients together in a bowl. On another dish sprinkle the panko and desiccated coconut. Preheat the oil in a pan to a medium high heat and test the oil by tearing of a small square of bread and dropping it in, it should bubble steadily, not vigorously. If the oil is to hot bring the heat down and allow it to cool a bit. You are gonna want to start a mini production line, so line up your ingredients. It should go seitan, dredge, batter, breadcrumb mix – Line the components up in this order to make it easy on your self. Pick up a piece of seitan or a mushroom and dip in the dredge coating well to help the batter stick, dip in the batter then roll gently in the crumb mixture and drop gently in the oil. Fry off a 3-4 prices at a time – depending how much space you have in your pan – until a dark golden brown. Drain off some of the excess oil by placing the fried lil’ nuggets on kitchen paper. Serve with a sweet chili dipping sauce or just ketchup.