This Food Network Friday (hosted by Tami at Vegan Appetite) was a Braciole from chef Anne Burrell. I’ve seen Anne on a few American food programmes but I’d never heard of Braciole. Overall my version was very tasty indeed but not quite what I planned.
The first challenge of course was what to do about the beef. I needed something that rolled, and I haven’t had success with any traditional seitan recipe before. So just like the last time we needed to wrap something, I turned to the Soytan cutlets from 1,000 Vegan Recipes. To make it more beefy, I added in tomato paste and HP sauce. This was likely my problem, because the mixture was a bit fragile once I rolled it out into 2 large cutlets. When I tried to roll the stuffing it started to fall apart. So I removed the stuffing and gave the cutlets a quick bake – and then of course they firmed up a bit too much to roll as I’d planned. I improvised quickly and just wrapped up the stuffing in the cutlets and baked them until the stuffing was warm.
For the stuffing I just used the bacon/ham from American Vegan Kitchen instead of the pancetta, and soya milk for the milk. I used Cheezly mozarella and added in also a tsp of white miso and a sprinkle of nutritional yeast for eztra cheesiness. And I made the sauce just as described – except I didn’t dare to try and simmer my parcels as I feared spilt stuffing everywhere. I served the parcels with some roast garlic mashed potatoes and green beans. So I just piled up the potatoes, put the parcels on the top then poured the sauce round the sides and added a few green beans.
The sauce was really tasty with a hint of chilli, and I liked the stuffing and seitan combination a lot. I think simmering the cutlets in the sauce would have infused the flavour through the seitan and been better, but my parcels were just too fragile. Thinking about this later, I remember making a roulade when I tested for Joni’s burger book which would have been a much better base for the beef. I can’t wait to see what the others did for this one.
Cooking the Vegan Books 
Nice job!!! The stuffing and rolling was tricky.
It looks realy pretty, Liz. I love the set-up in your version. Great idea with the garlic mashed potatoes, too! Yum!
Even though you had a few problems, it looks like the end result came out pretty well! Looks fancy!
That’s a great looking plate, Liz! You improvised well– and it must have tasted wonderful!
That plate looks gorgeous!