Food Network Friday!

So, right now, I'm on vaca! I wrote this post before I left because I'm going on a cruise, and I'm not sure what the internet situation is there.. So, my friend Kelly from Stuff from Scratch is publishing my pre-written post for me, thanks Kelly!


For this week's FNF, I got to pick the recipe! I originally wanted to pick something from Bobby Flay because for some reason he's my favorite! I'm actually quite picky apparently because I went through his recipes as well as some of my other favorite Food Network chefs (The Neelys and Sunny Anderson) before I chose this recipe from Guy Fieri, Seitan and the Bodacious Bulb. Aright, he didn't use seitan, but he should have! Because it's so good! For someone who doesn't like to use oil, I picked a recipe that calls for a lot of it. And also a lot of garlic (although, I don't feel like this was garlicy enough for me, I must have done something wrong..). Michael and I love garlic, like to the point where we get garlic burn.. I didn't exactly follow his recipe, because there were so many steps.. so I'll tell you what I did!


First, like I said, I used seitan in place of the chicken. The seitan recipe I used was adapted from the Tender Seitan recipe from Weekly Vegan Menu. The only reasons why it was "adapted" was because I didn't have all the ingredients or the time that it called for. I didn't have the chicken-style broth mix or the tahini, but other than that I followed it pretty closely. Instead of baking for 3 hours at 325°, I did it for 45 minute increments at 375°. This seitan was really good! And as you can see in the last photo, it had kind of a skin to it, like chicken. Michael actually asked me if I "made a skin" for it, not entirely sure what that meant.. but that's just what the baking process did to it!

Now, Guy's recipe was quite long and the first part of it included cooking the chicken backbone (ick!) alone. Here's what I did: I made the garlic oil, browned the seitan pieces (I used two out of the four pieces I got from the seitan recipe) in some of the oil. 

I then added in the onion/celery/carrot/garlic (from the oil) until it was all tender (I realized afterwards the veggies were just for flavor, and I wasn't supposed to cut them up so small, but I strained it through a colander anyways, so it was fine!)

Then, I took out the seitan and added the water/broth and let it boil for about 30 minutes. 

Then, I strained the sauce, reserving the liquid to make the gravy.  I took some of the liquid and added some flour to create the roux, then I added in the remaining liquid to create the gravy. 

I didn't fry up any of the garlic slices like he suggested. I wonder if I didn't cook my garlic oil for long enough, because, like I said I wanted more garlic!! Oh, it may be because I only made half of the garlic oil recipe (or did I make 1/4 of it?) Either way, I didn't use the correct amount of garlic cloves now that I think about it (whoops!) Or maybe those fried garlic pieces really were necessary.. Either way, I thought this dish was pretty good!