FNF - stuffed chicken with smoked mozzarella, rapini and roasted tomatoes

           

Food Network Friday

FNF, hosted by Tamasin Noyes of American vegan Kitchen, Grills Gone Vegan and an upcoming sandwich cookbook, is recreating Robert Irvine's Stuffed Chicken with Smoked Mozzarella, Rapini and Roasted Tomatoes. Irvine happens to be one of my favorite Food TV chefs mainly because he isn't afraid to cook vegetarian. On the Dinner: Impossible show, he has always made sure to have at least one vegetarian option, as lame as his choice sometimes happen to be.  When he was replaced by that clod "Iron Chef," Michael Symon, my blood boiled - only Emeril and Paula beat him out for being more anti-veg.

This recipe was another something-stuffed with something and then baked.  I have posted two stuffed seitan recipes: one that was braised and one that was baked. I chose the straightforward approach here and just  baked the stuffed gluten with the smokey Daiya and roasted rapini and tomatoes. There are no commercially available smoked vegan cheeses, but it is a simple matter of adding a few drops of liquid smoke to the gluten stuffing. The gluten was very pliable and soft (another gluten recipe that needs more testing, but for which I will post the recipe as is). After stuffing, I rolled the gluten in some panko crumbs and baked them for about an hour. You must make sure to seal up the raw gluten around the filling very well otherwise you will wind up with more melted cheese on your pan than in your seitan.

The potatoes that accompany Irvine's recipe are simply roasted in the oven along with the seitan. I sprinkled ours with smoked salt to echo the smoke in the gluten rolls. They turned out buttery and creamy with just a slight smokey flavor.

The kids, especially Kate, really enjoyed this. In fact, while Mikel and Cat were picking out the strings of rapini stems, Kate casually glanced over as she meticulously cut her stuffed seitan and nonchalantly commented that, "Honestly, you can't even taste the rapini." As an adult, I can testify that you can indeed taste it, but as far as I am concerned, if it isn't discernible to a ten year-old, that's just fine by me.


Cost Breakdown

gluten: $1
olive oil: $1
tomato, rapini: $7
Cribari Tokay: $15
(Opici Marsala is vegan - thanks, Tami!)
shallot, veg stock, thyme: $1.50
Daiya: $5
potato, butter: $2.50
chives: $.25
Total to make 6 servings:
$33.25