Cinnamon Seitan Stew, Whole Wheat Pasta, Fresh Tomato Salad

Dinner 10/1 by Amy, Juan and Ben



• Cinnamon Seitan Stew

• Whole Wheat Pasta

• Fresh Tomato Salad

Now that it's getting darker earlier, not only am I thinking of more warming foods, but I'm losing the great natural light I was using to take the plated photos. Please bear with me as I figure out a way to take the photos so the food looks delicious and not totally washed out and off color.

Tonight's dinner was inspired by Nina Simond's recipe for cinnamon beef noodle stew from "Asian Noodles". To make it with seitan, Juan followed his usual technique but instead of cooking the kneaded dough in shoyu water, he used the broth that the recipe says the beef should be cooked in. This way the seitan absorbed the cinnamon-anise flavor. Then we added red peppers and carrots from the garden. Later, some Ironweed lacinato kale was added.

Ben got to make pasta for the first time. We used Bryanna Grogan Clark's pasta recipe with chickpea flour as the binder. No herbs this time, but it's better that the pasta didn't compete with the flavor of the stew. To serve, the cooked pasta was put in bowls and the stew was spooned over.

We also put together a fresh tomato salad made from some tomatoes from the garden. We used almost all of the varieties we're growing including Green Zebra, Yellow Pear, Chadwick Cherry, Ensalada Hybrid, and a few others, so there were lots of shapes and colors. Mixed with salt, pepper and some fresh basil from the garden, it helped lighten up the meal. I don't have a photo of it because I didn't serve myself any — due to my not liking raw tomato. It was so pretty though. Next time I'll take a photo of someone else's!