Vegetable Lo Mein with Char Shui seitan

This recipe really does come close to duplicating the taste of meat and it's very simple to prepare. The secret is cooking in a non-stick pan so you can use little oil and can glaze the seitan with the "char shui" ingredients without everything sticking.

I used Panda Lo Mein Oyster Sauce, which I really like. It is not vegan. You can find vegan oyster sauce substitute somewhere.

See the illustrations at the end of this post.

I started with the chicken seitan described earlier on this blog. I cooked it in a very old Rival plastic steamer, using the perforated steamer tray. I cooked it about 40 minutes.

Rival Steamer from the 70s

Ingredients:

• Precooked linguini noodles -- your choice of brand- about 1 cup or so
• Panda Brand Lo Mein Oyster Sauce or substitute as above
• Previously prepared Seitan, about 1/2 to 3/4 cup, diced
• Your favorite quantities of sliced button mushrooms, trimmed snow peas, diced green/red pepper
• 1/2 cup slivered white onion
• I Tbs Braggs Liquid Aminos  (or a good soy sauce)
• Canola oil
• 1 Tbs diced ginger
• 1 tsp finely diced garlic

Glaze--mix the following:

• I Tbs hoisin sauce
• 1 Tbs Braggs Liquid Aminos
• 1 Tbs Aji-Mirin sweet cooking wine (or 1 Tbs dry sherry with 1/2 tsp sugar mixed until dissolved
• 1/8 tsp five spice powder
• dash garlic powder

1. Dice the prepared seitan and marinate in 1 Tbs Braggs Liquid Aminos for at least 15 min
2. Prepare the glaze by mixing the hoisin, Braggs Liquid Aminos, miring and five spice powder
3. Stir-fry the marinated seitan with 1 Tbs oil in a non-stick wok or skillet on medium-high heat until well-browned with crispy edges. Use just enough oil to do the job. Reduce heat to medium and add the glaze, rapidly stir-frying to coat each piece of seitan.When the glaze has given the seitan a deep brown color, remove and drain on paper towel. Keep warm.
4. Wipe out wok, add 1 Tbs canola oil and stir-fry onion until translucent.
5. Add green/red pepper, garlic and ginger and stir-fry another 2-3 minutes, then add mushrooms and snow peas. Stir-fry until mushrooms have softened and snow peas have turned a deeper green. They should remain crisp, however.
6. Add the lo main noodles and stir-fry until hot. 
7. Add 2-3 Tbs Panda Lo Mein Sauce  and still until everything is coated.
8. Serve the noodles and vegetables topped with the char shiu  seitan

DON'T mix the seitan in with the noodles and vegetables during cooking; it will get soggy.

Stir-frying the marinated seitan 

After adding glaze and cooking down until well-coated

char shui seitan waiting the vegetable bride

Cooking the onions

Now adding the green pepper, garlic and ginger. 

and then the mushrooms

...and then the snow peas and the noodles

This was really good and easy to make