Patron Exclusive Recipe #1: Stir-fried spring vegetable with seitan

Hey guys, how’re you doing? 

This is Steph writing here. First of all, Happy Year of Pig!

Now with Yuanxiao Festival (a.k.a. Lantern Festival) celebrated, that means the 15-day Lunar New Year holiday is officially over. 

So beginning from this year, I want to start a written recipe project here on Patreon. 

I’ve been mulling over about this project for a while now. But last year my work’s been so busy (my main client was launching a global project and as the Chinese language consultant I was swamped by work). With that global project finally over and things seem to be getting back to normal, I can start sharing more recipes with you guys now.

Here I want to take the chance to thank all of your great support over the past year. It really really meant a lot to us!!! Also, you guys are such an awesome community of foodies!

So right, because we have such a knowledgable and open-minded community, I feel very comfortable sharing more “less common” or “adventurous” recipes. 

They’ll be some of our daily home cooking ones that are “too simple” to be a video but demonstrating how a “Chinese meal would be”, such as some quick yet tasty stir fries/stews/soups. They’ll be some dishes I read on all kinds of books then successfully recreated, like the one for this week is a stir fry vegan dish from one of my favorite novels “Dream of the Red Mansion”(《红楼梦》). They’ll be some dishes I saw and learned on Chinese TV. They’ll be some dishes that are popular at restaurants and eateries here in China. They’ll be dishes I ate and learned when traveling throughout China (and maybe in some rare cases Southeast Asia)…

There’re various reasons that we’re not doing those dishes on the channel for now, like timing, filming, audience acceptance, etc. Maybe we’ll revisit them and film a whole video for them in the future. However, in the meanwhile, I really want to share with you guys all these great food! So here we are, a written recipe project for Patrons only.

It’ll be me, Steph, doing this and please excuse my not-as-good-as-Chris writing. In these recipes, it’ll be written content + photos for demonstration, maybe sometimes a quick cellphone video if necessary. And they’ll be recipe-focused, that said less long and less fun historical/cultural facts. (Sorry if you’re into it, but the recipe for the video will still have that. :))

So, alright, now let’s start the first recipe:

Stir-fried spring vegetable with seitan (also how to make seitan taste like meat)

**Ingredients**

1. Seitan (面筋, Seitan is wheat gluten, the ones on the bottom of the photo), 100g. 

The one I used in this recipe is the loose and stringy Chinese type. 

Generally, in China there're about three types of seitan:

In this recipe, I used this fresh soft ones (水面筋/"fresh seitan", usually the Japanese ones are the same type, I guess that's what they'll be selling at Asian supermarkets); 

Roast/baked seitan (烤麸, this is the type that has little holes in it. A quick googling tells me that some places may also carry this type. If you can only find this kind, it's OK to use in stir fry too. Just really squeeze out the water before the toasting step); 

The deep-fried seitan puffs (油面筋). This puff balls are for stews and soups. 

2. Spring vegetable of your choice, common wormwood or asparagus. 200g. 

In the novel, the dish is made with “Artemisia selengensis/common wormwood” (芦蒿). It got a specific herbal fragrance and it is a highly sought-after produce in spring time (especially around the Yangtze River Delta). For me, it’s one of the signature tastes of spring. 

I don’t think you can get this outside of China so you can totally sub it with an equal amount of asparagus, which is also a nice and crunchy spring veggie. 

3. Optional for color and some heat: one small red chili. I’m using chaotianjiao (similar to Thai bird’s eye). 

 Asparagus works perfectly in this recipe too. 

**Seasoning**

So the seasoning is super simple here, we want to keep the “aroma/fragrance” of the vegetable as much as possible. 

1. Salt, 3/4 tsp.

2. Sugar, 1/2 tsp. 

3. Oil, 1 tbsp.

4. Stock, 2 tbsp. 

You can use 2 tbsp water + 1/2 tsp stock concentrate. 

Or you can use 2 tbsp water + 1/4 tsp chicken bouillon or MSG. 

Or, if you’re like me and enjoy the “hay-liked” fresh tasty in vegetables (e.g. I love very fresh green tea and Chris’ grandma thought it taste like hay), then use 2 tbsp of water straight up.

**Process**

1. Cut or tear your seitan into 5cm-long-and-2-3mm-wide thin strips.

 5cm-long-and-2-3mm-wide thin strips 

2. Cut or snap the fiberous bottom off the common wormwood or asparagus, and cut into 5cm long sections. 

Cutting off the bottom part.

Cut into ~5cm sections.

3. Deseed the red chili (if using) and cut into thin strips.

4. Now to blanch the seitan to get rid of the unpleasant undertone. To some cool water, add in your seitan strips. Let it come to a boil, boil for 2 minutes, strain and set aside.

Blanching in a light simmer for 2 minutes.

After blanching, strain and set aside.

5. If you’re using asparagus, blanch them for 30 seconds, toss in cold water, strained and set aside. (No need to pre-blanch for common wormwood.)

6. Now we’re ready to fry. In order for seitan to “taste like meat” (please forgive my “gimmicky” analogy here, lol), we need to toast them gently on medium heat. 

First, of course, long yau. Get your piping hot, shut off the heat, add in your oil, give it a swirl to get a nice non-stick surface.   Heat on medium now, add in the strained seitan. Fry them till you can see some slight golden brown bits on it. It took 2-3 minutes for me. 

Toasting seitan.  (Apologies for the sticking wok, Chris is using the other wok in the kitchen for deep-frying sticky rice balls). 

7. Now that the seitan is nice and toasted, we can add in the vegetable. Toss the vegetable in then add in the 2 tbsp stock/water. The steam from the water will help the vegetables cooked evenly while maintaining vibrant color. 

Toss in the vegetable and then your liquid of choice.

The steam from the water.

The liquid helps the vegetable to cook evenly.

8. Stir fry for about 1 1/2 minute to 2 minutes (keep an eye on it, once the green color starts to darken a bit it means it’s cooked), add in the salt and sugar, quick stir, heat off, plate it, and the stir-fried spring vegetable with seitan is done.

Adding in salt and sugar at the end when the veggie is basically done. Also tossing in the red chili.

And......out.

This is one of my favorite ways to eat seitan, it’s quick and easy, it’s healthy, full of seasonal flavor, and the seitan got some mock-meat feeling after the blanching and toasting. 

Light and fresh, the taste of spring.

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I hope you like it. And hope you would enjoy this kind of written recipes. 

Coming up next week, it’ll be Yunnan Hani People’s pounded potato with fresh herbs.