Isa’s Seitan & Wild Mushroom Stew

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With November’s chill slowly creeping over the plains, so too has our appetite for warm hearty dishes. Luckily by November soup and stew season is in full effect. This recipe starts with seitan sausages, then adds regular stew familiars like potatoes, carrots, onion, garlic. Sans the vital wheat gluten for the sausages, this recipe is quite the pantry powerhouse.

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Cooking With Thomas: Tempeh Kao Soi + Celery Root Purée

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One of our favorite cooks, Thomas from fullofplants.com, always has recipes that bring a little class to the table. We wanted to try our hand at some of his recipes to see what we can keep in our back pocket to whip out to impress guests. Today we tried a red curry soup, and a celeriac and cauliflower purée. I’m interested in the wealth of fancy/pretentious plating options a nicely flavored purée can provide.

Maybe celery root is bigger in France because the one I got was barely even half of the weight suggested in Thomas’s recipe. Unsurprisingly, the purée lacked a little of the celery flavor, but adding some celery salt in lieu of sea salt added a little more flavor to the dish. Perhaps a vinegar or lemon juice could add a nice brightness to the purée.

The Tempeh Kao Soi was an instant hit. The tempeh was only marinated for about 30 minutes, but it still tasted delicious and meaty after giving it a nice char in a cast iron skillet. The curry soup was spicy and packed a huge punch of savory flavor, with a bright hit of lime juice carrying through the dish. Served over wide rice noodles. I think a little charred broccoli could add some crunch and nutrition to the soup, but honestly it was perfectly simple as is.

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Impromptu thanksgiving

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Cody really wanted to make green bean casserole, so Blair and I made some other autumnal sides.

The butternut squash soup was satisfying and creamy, but we had to add sweetener and ginger and nutmeg to make the squash palatable. I think it could use more stock and some milk (coconut, almond, oat) to make it even creamier in the blender. Maybe using immersion blender would be better.

Mashed potatoes were good but we wished they were Yukon golds instead of russets. Made creamy with a little Kite Hill almond yogurt which honestly tasted awful on its own.

Cody killed Isa’s green bean casserole recipe. We cooked the casserole in a large Dutch oven before we baked it in a glass dish. It was creamy, almost cheesy, and baked to perfection. Thermometer stuck in the middle side registered 220°. Casserole was crunchy with the fried onions, but we wished it had more french cut green beans to match the large amount of mushrooms in the recipe.

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