The un-recommended recipes thread.

http://hezbollahtofu.blogspot.com/2008/09/seitan-said-dance.html

Seitan, chocolate, red wine, garlic... how could you go wrong? Other than the lack of a recommendation for an appropriately robust side, which was a bad sign in retrospect.

I tried it. It was kinda expensive for a dish that doesn't actually produce that much food (two decent sized portions, maybe three.) It was A LOT of work. The sauce was bitter and barely edible, the carrot chunks (cut according to the directions) were too big and the seitan, after I browned it according to the directions, went back in the sauce, boiled away and was terminally mushy by the time it hit the plate. The texture reminded me of a crock pot stew- everything was soft and gave way at first bite. I didn't even know one could do that with seitan!

I've NEVER had such an underwhelming result with a seitan dish. :( I was really excited about it, it looked amazing on paper, and I was really bummed when it didn't come out. Figured I'd warn the rest of you before anybody else made a time consuming and expensive effort on a bad recipe.

And while I'm warning people about recipes that aren't worth the effort: http://www.vegnews.com/pdf/veganize_it.pdf does not taste at all like mac and cheese. It tastes like macaroni in a thick carrot-potato soup, which isn't really surprising because that is what it is. Nothing in the recipe tastes like cheese, and they don't magically come together and start to resemble cheese, except in being orange. It would probably be pretty good with some nutritional yeast, but at that point you'd just have too-much-trouble version of every vegan mac and cheese recipe you've ever made. Skip it.

Kind of like a pre-Teese "would you like a vegan cheese pizza?"

I also have to admit the idea of chocolate and garlic...not for me.

Chocolate, red wine and garlic looks suspiciously like my diet anyhow.

Just not all in the same dish. I learned my lesson.

Actually those things could be combined (with other ingredients...a lot of chiles) to make a very kickass vegan mole poblano over grilled seitan (or a veggie enchilada). I've never tried. I'll see if I can concoct a recipe though. The wine is best served on the side...in a glass.

That recipe OTOH is foul. I don't need to try it...I can imagine.

And normally I can salvage anything.

I stank up my kitchen something fierce too. I bleached out the pan it was in, just to be sure.