Maroggia’s Mill Cookbook: Vegetarian Seitan Empanadas / Il Ricettario del Mulino di Maroggia: Empanadas vegetariane al seitan

Another day at the Mill, a new recipe for the Cookbook…or rather two new recipes! Today I will be teaching you how to make seitan, a product that has gained more and more visibility in the past years. It takes very little time to make it and the result is excellent. Seitan is a high-protein food of oriental origins that is often used in vegetarian and vegan diets. Being very rich in gluten it is not suitable for celiacs. If cooked with seaweed or flavoured with soy sauce seitan is a complete food, containing 8 amino acids essential to our diet. A very versatile product and a good alternative to meat (it can be flavoured in many different ways), it is worth to include this ingredient in our diets. One kilo flour is enough to obtain 500 g of seitan in just a few minutes of kneading and washing the dough. The rest of the job is done by soaking and boiling the mixture of flour and water.

Living on my own: Brown rice, lentils and red cabbage / Living on my own: Riso integrale, lenticchie e cavolo rosso

From this month onwards, slowly and not in too categorical way, my blog will adapt to a new lifestyle I find myself forced to adopt due to health reasons. Many things will be banned from my kitchen, some of which are not such a big deal (such as red meat, that I already eat very rarely), and others that will be very difficult to accept and implement (cheese and dairy products, and most shockingly baked goods). Despite the general ban on leavened and baked goods I will continue to post recipes for bread and the like, which will be put to the scrutiny of my faithful guinea pigs. Stopping my kneading routine? No sir! I will not deny that right now, as I am typing on the keyboard my mood is anything but positive. While recognizing that a change is necessary acceptance is still very far from my landscape. Funnily enough this recipe, which I had cooked a little before knowing about this major change, aligns itself very well to the diet I will have follow probably for the rest of my life (even thought some occasional transgression will surely occur). Sure a change of diet doesn’t mean I won’t be having good food and this recipe is proof. But let us read more about the beneficial properties of the ingredients employed in this recipe.