Food Network Friday: Moorish Chops

Let's open up this week's Food Network Friday with Liz from Cooking the Vegan Books. Liz chose this recipe originally from Jamie Oliver, and it's a good one! Liz used smoked tofu wrapped in filo pastry to top her bean mixture. It sounds delicious and reminds me that I have got to try my smoker. The saucy beans and spinach really look tasty. Great pick for the recipe, Liz!

Liz's version

Here's Kim's take from Vegan Conversion Challenge. That seitan cutlet looks perfectly cooked and check out the glorious looking vegetables with the beans. Swiss chard! I've got to say, this photo really reminds me of a Tal Ronnen dish. Well done, Kim!

Kim's version

For my version, I opted for seitan. Rather than chops, I did a variation of my Lite Seitan from American Vegan Kitchen and made it into roasts. I dropped the beans from that seitan recipe and added a few different flours to it for a slightly firmer seitan. Then the roasts were cut into 1-inch slices and filled with the pastey stuff. Pretty neat trick, huh? I've done stuff like that with tofu, but for some reason never with seitan.

My version

Rather than give you a lengthy recipe, I'll just tell you my changes. Keep in mind that I'm cooking for 2. In the first part of the recipe, I just halved everything and used on 8-ounce roast. For the beans, I subbed a Field Roast Chipotle Sausage for the bacon, dropped the olive oil, and halved the red onion and red pepper. For the seasonings, I used 1 teaspoon fresh thyme and 1/2 a dry bay leaf, along with the can of drained and rinsed great northern beans. I used swiss chard instead of spinach, and really didn't have enough. Throughout the cooking, I added about 1 cup vegetable broth. This made a great base for the seitan chop, but next time I think I'll add a little garlic. Because, well, it's garlic. I tend to cook beans in the same ways, so this was fun to branch out a little. It was a really satisfying dinner, so much so that I couldn't finish mine. But it was a fun and delicious recipe with techniques that can be incorporated elsewhere.

Anybody want to pick the next recipe and join us?

Don't miss a chance to win American Vegan Kitchen over at VegNews. Thanks to that awesome vegan magazine for hosting the contest.

Speaking of contests, Sarah never got back to me on her win and I had no way of contacting her. Sorry, Sarah. So the new winner of the Simple Little Vegan Slow Cooker Cookbook is #6, in2insight. Please email me your mailing address and I'll get this in the mail to you. Congratulations!

Stop by next week for another book review and contest!