Vegan MoFo! Italian seitan sandwiches with fresh tomato sauce
Dinner, Thursday October 1.
I had some leftover cheese from last night’s French Onion soup, some fresh tomatoes and peppers from the CSA, and some seitan I made a couple of days ago, and a nice baguette from a local bakery. Perfect for a simple sandwich! I made a simple tomato sauce from scratch using two cloves of garlic (chopped and sauteed in olive oil), one large ripe tomato, some basil from a plant that I have miraculously managed to keep alive for several months, and a dash of oregano and crushed red pepper. When making sauce from fresh tomatoes, it’s a good idea to scoop out most of the seeds and very liquidy bits unless you have a while to let it cook down or you plan on adding some tomato paste to thicken the sauce. You don’t want watery tomato sauce! If you’ve never made sauce from fresh tomatoes, I definitely recommend it, especially in summer or early fall when tomatoes are at their peak. You don’t want to try this with those nasty pallid mid-winter supermarket tomatoes.
For the rest of the sandwich, I chopped and sauteed some peppers and onions, then added some thinly sliced seitan bits. Mixed in a little bit of my tomato sauce and added some more oregano, a sprinkle of nutritional yeast, and a sprinkle of black pepper.
Around here, there is a certain kind of rolls (Amoroso) that are commonly used for hoagies, steak sandwiches, etc. I think they’re pretty gross and flavorless, so I usually get a nice baguette from Metropolitan Bakery or LeBus to make sandwiches with. Slice em open, stuff with the seitan/pepper mixture, top with tomato sauce and grated vegan cheese. Toss them under the broiler for a few minutes to melt the cheese, and enjoy!
I was lazy and didn’t feel like making any side dishes so I just added some dill refrigerator pickles that my dad made. If you want to be decadent, french fries or onion rings would be great with this, or if you want to be healthy, a nice green salad would work.
Gorgeous photos and gorgeous looking sandwich!
Yum! Did you make your seitan or store bought. If you made it can you share which recipe you used. Great information post!!!
Hi sheree- the seitan is homemade. The recipe is from Veganomicon, except I doubled it and I also add some onions and seasonings to my cooking broth. I wrote about making seitan here: http://jenmccleary.com/2009/06/seitan/
Drool.