Salisbury Steak Vegan Style

Sometimes I just really get to wanting a taste of my childhood. Now, I’m not talking about bologna, which I had a lot as a child growing up. My dad always called it “preacher’s steak.” My dad is a minister and growing up, you know minister’s aren’t always the richest in the land money wise, so we ate bologna and we loved it. I did at least. I never got tired of bologna sandwiches, but I digress, this post is not about bologna.

This is about another of my childhood comfort foods, salisbury steak, mashed potatoes and gravy. Ken thinks that when you make an eating lifestyle change, you should embrace new things and not try to re-create old ones. Well, I am a creature of comfort, and while I am not eating meat, eating something that looks, feels and tastes like salisbury steak…..WOW! Happiness rang forth in my mouth and belly!

So, it was truly delicious….thus my mistake. I didn’t stop with one portion, I had 2 helpings of mashed potatoes and gravy and I was totally miserable about an hour later. So the moral of this story is: just because it is vegan doesn’t mean you can eat as much as you want! Okay so this is where I am in my journey right now, I feel sad, but I know that what we need to do is to learn to eat the correct portion size and enjoy what we are eating. It is not all about pleasure but about Eating To Live! Thus a lifestyle change!

I had some left over millet, some new potatoes and some red kale that was all just calling my name last night, so I went into the kitchen and began to put together some things. I created my own recipe for “Salisbury Millet Patties”. I also made Vegan Gravy and Mashed Potatoes, and Sauteéd Red Kale with purple onion, red pepper and yellow squash. Our evening meals now contain some type of greens, either cooked or raw. T. Colin Campbell (author of “The China Study a must read for anyone who is interested in their health), says that if you want a trim waist, you must eat greens every day, so we are!

To make the Salisbury Millet Patties

2 cups left over millet (we toasted the millet before we cooked it)
1/2 cup diced onion
1/2 cup shredded carrot
1/2 cup diced celery
5 Tablespoons unbleached flour
2 eggs (using egg replacer)
1 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon pepper
1 teaspoon dried Rosemary leaves
1/2 teaspoon dried thyme

Sauté onion, carrot and celery in a cast iron skillet that has been rubbed with 1/2 Tablespoon olive oil. Add a little water once the vegetables have begun to sauté if needed to keep them from sticking and burning. The water will help them sauté without using additional oil. Place the cooked millet in a large mixing bowl, add the sauteéd mixture and mix well. Add 3 Tablespoons flour and mix well. Add the egg replacer (mixed with water as directions call for to make the egg substitute), and mix well. If the mixture does not hold together well when balled up in your fist add more flour or egg replacer as needed. I used a deep ladle to make my patties with.

Place 1 Tablespoon olive oil in cast iron skillet and bring up to heat. Fill a soup ladle with millet mixture, press down and then slip it out into your skillet. Continue until you have used all the millet mixture, or your skillet is full. (this made 4 large millet patties for me). Let millet patties brown (approximately 4 minutes), and flip over. Let cook an additional 5 minutes on this side. In the meantime make the gravy, (recipe below), and cover the patties with gravy. Cover the pan and let simmer for about an additional 5 minutes while you mash the potatoes.

Serve the millet patty beside mashed potatoes and cover both with gravy. Straight out of a country kitchen.

Gravy:

2 Tablespoons Earth Balance Margarine
1 medium onion
2 Tablespoons unbleached flour
2 Tablespoons cornstarch or agar agar
1 1/2 cups vegetable broth (plus 1/2 cup more to cut the gravy thickness later)
1 teaspoon nutritional yeast
2 Tablespoons soy sauce (or tamari or nama shoyu)
Pepper to taste

Place margarine in saucepan and melt over medium heat, add onions to sauté, once translucent, add flour and stir. Let flour cook for about 5-6 minutes so that flour does not taste starchy. You will need to stir almost constantly to keep the flour from burning. You don’t want to turn the heat down too far however, because it will not cook properly.

Once the flour has cooked, add the cornstarch to the 1 1/2 cups of vegetable broth and stir into the mixture in the saucepan and stir to combine the flour and broth. This will very quickly become thick. Use about 1/3 of the remaining broth to cut the thickness, stir and cut with 1/3 more broth 2 more times. Let simmer for 2 minutes. Remove from heat, stir in nutritional yeast, tamari and pepper. Serve.

For the Kale: I just cut up the kale, spine and all, sliced up some red peppers, and yellow squash, put 1 Tablespoon olive oil in iron skillet, added peppers and squash and let saute for a couple of minutes and then added the kale. I put vinegar on the table for everyone to use to their own liking.

I was very pleased with this dinner…again, I ate too much so that is my lesson for today…Just because it is vegan doesn’t mean you can eat all you think you want! I will stick to believing that our emotions control us, so when we can learn that lesson, and just say no to second helpings, we’ll be all the better for it.

Make and enjoy!

Happy, Healthy Eating

Jackie V.