Vegan Transition Food

Oprah did a 21-day vegan “cleanse” about a year ago or so… I was really hopeful that it would take and she’d stick to it, or at least publicly revel in the experience.  Alas, after the related show and web pages, we never heard much about it.

Until recently – in October, 2009, Oprah brought back Chef Tal Ronnen, and had him prepare his Gardein (combo of “garden” and “protein”) faux chicken breasts.  The recipe is still up on Oprah’s web site as of this writing.

It involves dredging the portions of Gardein in a flour/salt/pepper mixture, which is something I used to do with meat, but haven’t since going vegan.  So, from that perspective, it was a great throwback to familiar omni food prep.

After dredging the portions, you sauté them in oil to brown, then remove them and use the pan for additional ingredients, later deglazing it to make the gravy.

Folks, the gravy alone is worth making the whole recipe!  I may buy Chef Tal Ronnen’s cookbook for this feature alone.  Vegan gravy is challenging, to get the requisite richness and flavor and body, if you really want an experience that competes with meat gravies.

As it happened, my husband was watching this episode of Oprah with me, and had also been intrigued by Oprah’s vegan cleanse and subsequent silence.  He thought this recipe looked terrific, saying, “You should get Chef Tal’s cookbook”.  When I suggested that I try the Gardein product in one of my standard recipes in which I use a different faux chicken, he said, “No, make it exactly like he did – follow his recipe and see how we like it!”

So, I did.  I made the Gardein “Chicken” Scaloppini Recipe from The Conscious Cook by Tal Ronnen, and did make the following substitutions:

Instead of serving it with the noodle cake, I made Roasted Garlic Smashed Red Potatoes.  I will post that recipe in a later update.  I also substituted baby portabella mushrooms for the shitake mushrooms, since that is what I had on hand.

My reaction:  I thought that the Gardein portions (I can’t really call them breasts, and they aren’t patties either) were excellent in their consistency and taste, and really duplicate chicken quite well.  I liked the way they handled the cooking method used, which will be very familiar to new vegans who cooked stovetop meat recipes over the years.  I thought the mushroom gravy was awesome, and will sometimes replace my former standby from Veganomicon.

David was really glad I made the smashed potatoes, and a lot of them, because as usual he didn’t care for the “fake chicken”.  I asked him why he asked me to make it, since he never really enjoys any of the meat substitutes we use except the Morningstar Farms Vegan Grillers for hamburgers, and the same brand of crumbles used in Lasagna and Pizza.  He also likes Quorn, which is not vegan so shouldn’t really be mentioned on this Blog – but that is his favorite chicken substitute when used in an adapted Pampered Chef recipe (“Not Chicken Broccoli Braid”).

The high note for David was the new mushroom gravy recipe.  He loved that on his Garlic Smashed Potatoes.