Sharp knives are safer...not.

Many authors tell you a razor-sharp knife is safer. It's less likely to slip, they say.

Here is the fact: a razor-sharp knife hurts less when you cut yourself.

So about 30 years ago, I am making Peking Duck, one of my favorite dishes back in the days of carnivorous behavior. It's a tedious affair if you follow recipes in a classic Joyce Chen cookbook. One duck, crucified on chopsticks and hanging from the ceiling, rotating slowly in front of a fan all day after its sherry bath and between loving massages.

While the duck was swinging around, I got to the vegetables, starting with roll-cut carrots. I am using my razor-sharp Chinese cleaver. I gave that cleaver a lot of love, sharpening it regularly on a fine whetstone and then on a steel. It would easily split a piece of paper held vertically, one nice test of sharpness.

As I am thinking about what I will do next, I see red among the orange carrot slices. My left index finger is gashed and oddly, I can't straighten it out. Off the the emergency room....

I had painlessly severed my skin, my extensor tendon and who knows what else. 3 hours later, I am back home (things were a lot faster back then) with a layered closure and enough rubber gloves to get back into cooking. The duck turned out fine but I never again used that cleaver.

My wife has a Pampered Chef utility knife that rests in a sharpening scabbard. That instrument is truly sharp. Every time I try to use it, I get a little queasy. Most of the time, I just use a serrated steak knife for most cutting or a not so sharp inexpensive chef's knife. My sharpening equipment is rarely used.

In all my years of cooking, I have never had a dullish knife slip.

Moral: a sharp knife is truly safe only when you don't use it.

Unbeefy Seitan...revisited

Tonight, I redeemed the too-wet seitan I mentioned yesterday.

First, I dried it between layers of paper towel. It's remarkable how much water it held.

I simply grilled it in non-stick pan with a little canola oil. I used a cast iron grill press to keep it flat and cooked it until it had a very appetizing external appearance.

In the same pan, I pan-roasted baby eggplant slices with a very small amount of oil until the slices softened and charred a bit.

I have the appearance part down now. I think the secret is starting in ice-cold cooking water or broth and raising the temperature to a simmer very slowly. I have to figure out the best way to dehydrate them before cooking. Tofu will develop a better texture when frozen and defrosted before cooking. I will try that next and see.

Working with a Recipe for Unbeefy Seitan Steaks

It's Sunday, which at our house is SeitanDay. I set out to make beefy seitan steaks.

I started with Ellen's Kitchen unbeefy seitan steaks. I like the idea of adding some garbanzo bean flour. I ground dried garbanzo beans in a Braun Coffee Grinder and added that to the vital wheat gluten and the nutritional yeast. I finally found some kombu seaweed this week, again at Whole Foods.

I also added about 1 Tbs corn oil and 1 Tbs tahini (sesame seed paste) to the mixing liquid to give the seitan a richer flavor. We had just bought celery and that provided me with plenty of celery leaves. I also substituted Braggs Liquid Aminos, about 1 Tbs to the cooking liquid. The broth had a great aroma.

The oils help make the gluten ball easier to work with. A firm silicone spatula is excellent for scraping bits of gluten from the bowl to incorporate into the gluten ball.

I didn't add quite as much liquid as the recipe called for.

After just enough kneading to mix the ingredients, I shaped the log and sliced into 1/4 inch slices.

and then pressed the slices into steak-like shapes. Well, sort of steak-like. I am not sure why the gluten has the variegated appearance. I couldn't knead that out.

Here's the cooking broth. I started with very cold broth (by adding a few ice cubes) when the steaks were submerged. I used a very low setting on my element (2) to  be sure the temperature was raised very slowly. The only problem is that eventually it will boil furiously, something you really don't want unless you like Goodyear-style seitan. It's best to use a very minimal simmer. So you have to watch the pot during this process.

One of the reasons I gave up meat is global warming. I own an SUV that we use for real off-road travel (the real deal). I made a calculation a couple years ago to look at the carbon impact of losing meat vs losing my SUV. The carbon impact of plant-eating was significantly greater than switching to a vehicle with twice the mileage as my 4Runner.  Plus I only drive a few miles each day--usually about 3 miles (the average car in the USA is driven about 40 miles daily--hard to believe). Case closed.

This morning's NY Times had a depressing article about global warming and grain prices. Looks like it may be more economical to eat grass-fed beef than seitan sometime in the future at the rate grain prices are increasing.

But back to cooking. The seitan is gradually getting warmer in the pot. It hasn't begun to expand yet. I suspect everyone who cooks seitan is surprised by the first time they lift the lid and find huge seitan monsters leaping out the pot.

Once the seitan is cooked, I prefer to let it cool in the broth until it's at room temperature. Then I store it, with its broth, in a tight lidded plastic container in the refrigerator.

Looks good so far--not brainy and nicely flattened like a steak

Today's New York Times Sunday Magazine featured Korean food. I prepared the seitan in the manner of beef bulgogi. I marinated two steaks in a mixture of soy sauce, sesami oil, scallions, garlic, black pepper and honey, then pan-grilled them. As a plant-eater, I have little need for an outdoor grill. The Times article also included a recipe for fried hijiki (a form of seaweed), which to my amazement I happened to have in the pantry. I stir-fried the soaked hijiki in a combination of canola and sesame oil, then added soy sauce, sesame seeds, chopped scallions and a pinch of sugar. The resulting hijiki looked great but tasted too much like the beach to me.

East meets Midwest. Seitan bulgogi, stir-fried hijiki and steamed corn.

What I learned today was that a seitan simmered in a salty broth doesn't do well with a salty marinade. Also. this particular batch was too watery. I will keep it dry in the refrigerator to see if it will dry a bit over the next few days. If I use the Ellen's Kitchen recipe again, I will omit the molasses or use less as I could taste the molasses through all the other flavors.

Final grade:

Taste: B (it was somewhat too salty)

Texture: C (even after grilling, the seitan was too watery. Juicy works for a steak but not seitan)

Appearance: A-  (it really looked like a steak)

Meat-like shredding: C