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 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
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