Catalan White Bean and Seitan Sausage Stew

Day 11 of Vegan Mofo.  I love Spanish food and Catalan food in particular. Because of its reliance on vegetables (onions, tomatoes, garlic, peppers, eggplant and legumes plus a huge assortment of others), it’s easily adaptable to vegan cooking. The best book on Catalan cooking in the US is Colman Andrews’ brilliant Catalan Cuisine. This recipe isn’t authentic – it’s more an amalgamation of several Catalan cooking elements. It also using a few tricks to save some time, which Mark Bittman would approve of but Coleman Andrews and your Catalan grandmother likely wouldn’t. But it tastes great and it’s easy to do.


There are lots of slow cooked braises in Catalan cooking, most of which start with a sofregit, which is a slow cooked combination of onions, tomatoes and olive oil. This is a slightly lower fat version (but don’t kid yourself in to thinking it’s super low fat because it’s not). If fat isn’t an issue, double the amount of olive oil. I use canned tomato sauce primarily because it cuts down on the time it takes to make the sofregit. If you use whole or canned tomatoes it will take a little longer. The other traditional element is a picada, which has been called a sauce but is more of a thickening agent in this recipe. They can be made from a variety of ingredients, but usually contains dried bread, nuts, garlic, and some spices. Traditionally they’re made in a mortar and pestle and are stirred into stews or braises towards the end of cooking to thicken the dish. When I’m in a rush, I use a min chopper instead of the mortar and pestle. Because the picada contains raw garlic, it will need to cook for 10-20 minutes in the stew in order to tame the sharpness. I use homemade seitan sausage, but you can substitute vegan chorizo if you want.

I normally am only cooking for two, so this is a two person recipe, but you can easily double, triple or even quadruple it. A final warning: a lot of traditional Catalan food is what Colman Andrews calls “brown food.” You can add some chopped parsley to it for some color, but if you want vibrant colors, this dish isn’t it. But if you want earthy, hearty food for a cold day, look no further.

Catalan White Bean and Seitan Sausage Stew

2 large onions, finely diced
1 teaspoon of kosher salt
1 tablespoon olive oil
1-2 teaspoons of pimento (smoked Spanish paprika, regular paprika is not a substitute)
1/8 teaspoon cinnamon
¼ cup of white wine
16 oz. canned tomato sauce (or 2 cups of canned or fresh, skinned tomatoes)
2 cups of cooked white beans
1 seitan sausage, sliced in quarters lengthwise and then into 3/8 in slices
1 piece of dried bread, toasted or fried in oil
¼ cup of toasted almonds
2-3 cloves of garlic
Salt and pepper to taste
Parsley for garnish

In a non-stick skillet, cook the onion, oil and salt over medium heat until well browned (about 20 minutes). Watch it carefully and don’t burn it. Add the pimento and cinnamon and cook for a minute or so. Deglaze with white wine. Add the tomato sauce and cook for another 2-3 minutes. Add the white beans after the sauce is reduced and let them heat through, about five minutes. Make the picada: in a mini chopper or food processor, process the almonds, bread, and garlic to a thick paste. Stir the picada into the stew and let it reduce for about 10 minutes. Stir in the seitan sausage and heat through for 5-10 minutes. Taste for salt and pepper and adjust to your preferences.

White bean cutlets and mashed potatoes

I love white beans. I use them in a lot of things from baked beans to dips to stews with artichoke hearts (make mental note – haven’t made the stew with artichoke hearts recently and really must blog about it soon). I made a pot of white beans over the weekend and still had some left and decided to do a variation of the chickpea cutlets from the Veganomicon using white beans. I wanted a more French or Italian feel for them so I ended up with a blend of white beans, garlic, sage, basil, and lemon zest and finished them in a sauce of shallots, garlic, capers, white wine and lemon juice.

What could be better with these than mashed potatoes and some cheezy sauce? I had some basil tofu aioli left over and decided it would add a nice lemon and herbal note to the potatoes. (Cheezy sauce is a household favorite with potatoes of all kinds: baked, hash browns, mashed, etc.)

White Bean Cutlets
Makes 6-8 cutlets

2 cups of cooked white beans
4 cloves of garlic
2 teaspoons of dried basil
1 teaspoon of dried sage
Zest from two lemons, finely diced
1 teaspoon kosher salt
½ teaspoon paprika
Freshly ground pepper to taste
1 tablespoon soy sauce
1 slice of whole wheat bread, ground to crumbs in a food processor
¾ cup of vital wheat gluten (or more if needed)
Olive oil or spray oil
2 tablespoons of roasted garlic
1 shallot, finely chopped
Juice of 2 lemons
1/2 cup white wine
1 tablespoon minced fresh basil (or 1 teaspoon dried)
1 tablespoon capers, diced if large

1. In a mixing bowl, mash the beans well and add the garlic, basil, sage, lemon zest, salt, paprika, black pepper, and soy sauce. Blend well.
2. Mix the bread crumbs in and then the wheat gluten and knead for a few minutes in the bowl. Divide into six to eight cutlets.
3. Heat non-stick skillet over medium heat and glaze with olive oil or spray oil. Add the cutlets and brown on one side 5-7 minutes. Flip and cook on the other side for another 5-7 minutes. Remove the cutlets from the pan and keep warm.
4. Sauté the shallot and garlic for 1-2 minutes. Deglaze with the lemon juice and white wine. Add the basil and capers. Add the cutlets back to the pan and flip once to coat with sauce. Serve with remaining sauce over the top.

For the mashed potatoes, simply boil potatoes and mash with roasted garlic, soy cream, and basil tofu aioli to taste. Serve with cheezy sauce (aka Nooch sauce).

Cheezy sauce (adapted from the Veganomicon, which you really should buy)

2 cloves garlic, finely chopped
1 teaspoon olive oil
1 teaspoon turmeric
1 tablespoon Dijon mustard
¼ cup of white wine
1 teaspoon dried tarragon
2 cups of vegetable stock or water
¼ cup of white flour
¾ cup nutritional yeast (nooch)
Salt and black pepper to taste

1. In a small sauce pan, sauté the garlic in the oil for a few minute. Be careful not to let it darken or burn.
2. Add the turmeric and mustard and stir to combine. Add the white wine and cook until reduced by half. Add the tarragon.
3. Mix the flour with the stock and combine with a whisk until smooth. Add to the sauce pan.
4. Add the nutritional yeast and cook over medium low heat until thickened, stirring often.

Assorted small plates

In addition to being vegan, we try to eat low fat, which means very little or no added oil most of the time. But over the weekend we had several high fat meals and by Monday I was feeling a little ill (and guilty) and needed to get back to eating low fat again. For dinner on Monday I decided to do a couple of no oil added dishes to get back on track. I get pretty hung up on menu planning and don’t normally mix “genres” of food, like Korean and Mediterranean, but my craving for Korean spinach got the better of me so I broke my own rules.


The Mediterranean dishes are both dips that go well with whole wheat pita chips, which are simple to make with store bought pitas. The muhammara is a red pepper dip that I wrote about recently. Because I was craving lower fat food, I cut the walnuts back to ¼ cup but otherwise kept the recipe the same. The white bean dip is an oil-less blend of well-cooked white beans, roasted garlic, lemon juice and basil. You don’t really need a recipe for it, since you can just mix everything together until it tastes right, but I have one friend who will complain if I don’t give some guidelines.

In Korean cooking, banchan are small side dishes that accompany every meal. Most are vegetarian and many are vegan. Is this spinach dish an authentic banchan? No, but it captures the essence well. It’s one of my favorite ways to make spinach or other greens and I get huge cravings for it at times.

White Bean Dip

2 cups of cooked white beans (yes you can use canned, but really, start to make real beans)
¼ cup roasted garlic puree
1 tablespoon (or more) of finely chopped fresh basil
Juice of 1-2 lemons (taste it after adding the juice of one – if you think it needs more, add more)
Kosher salt and fresh ground black pepper to taste

Puree all the ingredients in a food processor or blender (or use an immersion blender). Taste it to make sure it’s balanced and add more salty, lemon juice, basil or garlic as you see fit. If it’s too thick, thin it with a little water.

Spinach banchan

6 oz. cleaned spinach
2 tablespoons of soy sauce
1 teaspoon of red chile paste (sambal oelek or similar) or to taste
1 tablespoon sugar (any kind, white, brown, turbinado, etc.)
1 tablespoon rice wine vinegar
1 inch piece of ginger grated
1 teaspoon sesame seeds toasted

Blanch the spinach for 30 seconds. Drain and refresh in cold water. Squeeze dry to remove excess water. Chop finely and set aside. Combine remaining ingredients in a bowl and stir to dissolve the sugar. Taste to make sure it has a good balance (if it seems out of whack alter it to suite your tastes and mood). Add the chopped spinach and let it sit for about 5-10 minutes to allow the flavors to blend.

Toasted pita chips

Preheat oven to 350. Cut each pita into sixths. Separate the layers and place on a baking sheet. Toast in the oven for 5 – 8 minutes until dried and lightly browned.

Tamale Pie with Roasted Garlic, Ancho Chile Cashew Cream and Pumpkin Seed Cilantro Salsa

OK, I've signed up for Vegan MoFo, so I'm sort of committed now to posting at least five days a week.  I hope this wasn't a mistake.  In any event, there are a great number of really good blogs associated with Vegan MoFo, so give a couple of them a try.

I helped a friend with some work this past weekend and never got around to using the black beans I cooked. I was thinking about black bean and corn cakes, but that got modified to tamales, and finally to tamale pie since tamales are a tall order on a week night. This isn't a hard recipe, but it takes a little bit of time in the oven, but that's time you can use to make the cashew cream and salsa.


For the stuffing I used a pretty basic black bean chili, but you could substitute any recipe that you have and like. Again there are several components, but it comes together pretty quickly. If you have leftover chili in the fridge, you can use it to save time (but please don’t use canned chili).

Black bean chili (for the stuffing)

1 large or two medium onions, chopped
2 teaspoons of oil
2-4 red or green chiles, chopped (your choice as to type)
4 cloves of garlic
2 teaspoons of kosher salt
2 teaspoons of ground cumin
1 dried pasilla chile, ground
4 cups of cooked black or other beans
1 cup of tomato sauce (or chopped tomaotes)

Sauté the onion in the oil. Add the chiles, garlic and salt. Cook until they brown, about 5 minutes. Add the cumin and ground chile. Add the beans and tomato sauce. Simmer until it’s thickened, about 20 minutes.

Yes you could use canned beans, but you really should get into the habit of making beans from scratch. The texture’s better and they’re incredibly cheap. Make more than you need because you can put them in the fridge or freeze them. I tend to make beans on the weekend and then use them throughout the week. If you own a crock pot, use it. They’re great for making beans. (In fact they were invented for making beans but were instead sold as “slow cookers” because the marketing folks thought it would have wider appeal.) If you use canned beans drain them and rinse them to try to remove some of their unpleasant canned quality (good luck with that).

For the masa dough you need the following:

4 cups of masa harina
1 teaspoon of salt
1 teaspoon of baking powder
1 cup of corn kernels (from two ears of corn or you can use frozen)
4 cups of water

Mix the dry ingredients and corn kernels together and then add the water (but don’t add it until the chile is done and you’re ready to assemble the pie.

Lightly oil a 13 x 9 baking dish. Add half of the masa dough to the baking dish and pat it out to an even thickness. Pour the chili on top and then cover with the second half of the masa dough. Cover it with foil and put it in a 350 degree oven for about 40-45 minutes. Remove the foil and let it cook for an additional 10-15 minutes to brown. Remove from the oven and let it sit for about 10 minutes before cutting it and serving it. It makes 6-8 servings (or more).

While the tamale pie cooks, make the cashew cream and salsa. The cashew cream is based on a recipe from the incredible Millennium Cookbook. It’s similar in texture and tanginess to sour cream, but has a lot of other flavors as well and if you have a blender, it’s incredibly easy to make.

Roasted garlic and ancho chile cashew cream

½ cup of cashew pieces
½ cup of water
2 teaspoons of white miso
¼ cup of lime juice
1 ground ancho chile
1 head of roasted garlic (cut it in half horizontally, wrap in foil and roast it for about 30-45 minutes in a 350 oven)

Combine all of the ingredients in a blender and blend on high for a few minutes until it thickens. Transfer to a bowl and refrigerate until it’s needed.

Pumpkin Seed and Cilantro Salsa

1/3 cup of toasted pumpkin seeds
1 bunch of cilantro with stems , washed and roughly chopped
1 clove of garlic
1 red chile (or more to taste)
Juice from 1 lime

Combine all ingredients in a food processor and process until well mixed but still a little rough. Transfer to a bowl and refrigerate.

To serve, plate the tamale pie and add a dollop each of the cashew cream and the pumpkin seed cilantro pesto . Because of the chiles and cumin, beer is a natural choice. I prefer beers with a good malt back bone for hot food, since the malt sweetness cuts the heat, but other people prefer hoppy beers. I’d go for a malty brown ale, an English style bitter, an Oktoberfest or a Baltic Porter. If you decide to make it hotter, I’d choose a beer with good malt intensity to stand up to it.