The other thing I made tonight was seitan, or wheat meat. This can be a long drawn out process with many hours spent kneading dough if you start with regular wheat flour. A MUCH quicker way is to just start with the gluten. I used to be able to get raw gluten from the bulk bins at Whole Foods, but they seem to have stopped carrying it at my store. Now I buy Bob's Red Mill brand.

The first step is to mix up the dry ingredients - the gluten and spices. After that you pour in the liquid; here it's a mixture of water and lite soy sauce.

After all the liquid is in, you stir it for just a few seconds until all of the gluten is wet. It gets kind of a lumpy texture.

Less than a minute of stirring, and it's dough!

At this point you can take it out of the bowl and start kneading it a bit. It doesn't take much, but kneading it will enhance the final texture. Then you form it into a log and let it rest for 15 minutes while you prepare the stock. After resting it will have congealed even more, and you can slice it into small pieces. Do NOT stack the pieces after you slice them (like I did in the picture)! They'll stick together, and then you'll have to sort of reslice them. And that's annoying.

Once the stock is boiling, you can reduce it to a simmer and toss in the pieces of seitan. Here it doesn't matter as much if they touch - the stock will keep them from sticking too much. In the picture (sorry it's so dark - poor lighting conditions) you can sort of see them puffing up all ready.

Here is the gluten after 45 minutes of simmering. That's a lot of wheat meat!

After they've finished cooking it's nice to let them dry out a bit before using or refrigerating/freezing. Here's Chris' artistic interpretation of the seitan drying.