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

chiocciole with vodka sauce

Butter and Cream. Two highly difficult, if not impossible, flavors to veganize well.

Vodka Sauce is a basic tomato sauce, with vodka added, and at the end, cream stirred in. There are many 'creamer' substitutes on the market, Silk, So Delicious Coconut, and Mimic are a few that come to mind. Any of these would be appropriate to use as a creamer substitute (make sure they are unsweetened). For this recipe I used readily available vegan sour cream (I am not sure about this claim globally) and non-dairy milk instead of dairy cream. I normally use homemade almond or cashew cream, but I have noticed that these 'break' when heated, so if using nut creamers made at home (without the laboratory-induced stabilizers), do not heat the sauce after adding the 'cream.'

Since this is a Vodka Sauce, use a vegan vodka (Absolut, Skyy, Stoli are vegan friendly according to Barnivore.com.), but you won't need much, so unless you are also throwing a vegan dinner party, buy small or have an after dinner cocktail.

The pasta I tossed this with is called Chiocciole. Simple sauce on unique macaroni.

I tend not to cook a whole pound of pasta for our family of five as we tend to have too much leftover, but I did this time. Creamy sauces are a favorite at our house and the lack of other vegetables to round out the dish made me sure that the family was going to pile on the starch. As predicted, there was very little leftover, and what remained was secretly eaten by a lucky breakfast-er. If it was solely up to me, this would have been Pasta Primavera with Vodka Sauce - with the addition of lots of sauteed vegetables. I gave in this time and let the majority's voice rule. Just every once in a while. 

Cost Breakdown

pasta: $3
tomatoes: $2
vodka: $.50
vegan sour cream and milk: $1.50
onion, garlic, herbs: $1.50
Total to make 5 servings:
$8.50