The Vegan Charcuterie Project: Gyros

Faced with ripe heirloom tomatoes and cucumbers in the CSA box and wanting to bring Brentje dinner at work, I turned my attention to a dish I used to enjoy as a wee gelsprog: gyros! My mom used to get a little kit at the grocery store that had pita breads, seasoned lamb, and cucumber sauce. I've made veggie gyros before, mostly from Joanne Stepaniak's recipe in Vegan Vittles. These recipes usually involve sauteeing strips of seitan or tempeh in herbs and spices, and they work well enough, but in the gyros I remembered, the meat is already seasoned when it's cooked, so the flavor is present throughout. Since I had to make the seitan from scratch anyway, why not?

I decided to use the foil-wrapped, steam method of making the seitan instead of baking it, which would probably have worked just fine as well. The cylinder o' seitan reminds me of those weirdly enthralling, creepy rotating meat on a stick warmers at Doner Kebab places, and maybe some day I can spring for one of these home models.

In any case, Brentje ate about 2/3 of the gyro meat on three pitas for dinner, so I'm going to call the project a success.

GYROS

Ingredients

For Seitan

1/2 c. cooked beans (I used navy, but other choices will work)

1 t. Better Than Bouillion "no beef" base

1 c. unsalted homemade vegetable stock*

1 T. vegetable oil

4 cloves garlic, peeled and minced

1 t. salt

3/4 t. dried marjoram

1/2 t. ground coriander

1/2 t. coarsely ground black pepper

1/4 t. dried savory

1/4 t. dried thyme

1/2 t. dried rosemary, crushed

1/8 c. nooch

1 1/4 c. vital wheat gluten

To assemble

Pita breads

ripe tomatoes, cut into wedges

cucumbers, seeded, peeled, and sliced thickly

cucumber sauce (see below)

Directions

1. Prepare steamer and bring water to a boil. Lay out one large sheet of aluminum foil.

2. Mash beans with a fork. Mix in other ingredients through nooch. Mix in gluten and taste for seasoning.

3. Form dough into one large log shape, roll in aluminum foil, and twist ends. Steam for 1 hour, 15 minutes.

4. Let cool for about an hour. Make cucumber sauce while seitan is cooling. Then, slice thinly into strips. Assemble pitas, splitting the seitan, tomatoes, and cucumbers among each gyro and topping with cucumber sauce. (Or, if you're on the go, wrap up the sandwiches in foil without sauce and pack the cucumber sauce separately.)

Cucumber Sauce: I don't use a very strict recipe for this, but rather take about 1/2 c. soy yogurt, and combine with a few tablespoons of vegan mayo, about 1/2 t. onion powder, a pinch of salt, and some freshly ground pepper. Mix in about half a cucumber, peeled, seeded, and diced. If the sauce is too thick, add some plain soymilk or water.

* The unsalted stock adds some flavor and color. If you don't have any, throw in a small amount of Kitchen Bouquet browning sauce to make the seitan a palatable color

Why Newspapers are Failing

From the front page of today's New York Times:

In Khazna, the explosions left two large craters in different sections of the village. One was filled with water mixed with blood. Witnesses said the explosions burst the village’s water main. The chassis and big wheel of what appeared to have been one of the trucks used in the attack lay atop leveled houses. In what looked like the village’s main road, storefronts were ripped up, and destroyed vehicles were tossed everywhere. ("Truck Bombs Turn Iraqi Village Near Mosul into Rubble")

What looked like the village's main road? Are they sending in reporters, or looking at the town on Google Earth?

More nonreporting:

In recent weeks, the authorities have managed to catch three of the 53 escapees from May and have thrown 51 prison officials, including the director, into jail while the investigation into collusion in the escape continues. The prime piece of evidence against the prison employees was the surveillance system they were supposed to use to monitor inmates. The video, leaked by law enforcement officials and now available on YouTube, recorded the jailbreak in detail. ("War Without Borders - Mexico's Drug Traffickers Continue Trade in Prison")

It's very reassuring that the intrepid reporters at the New York Times are watching videos on YouTube all day so that you don't have to do so. If only they'd tell us how many google hits turn up when you search for "Mexican Drug Trafficking," we could truly understand the situation.