Thanksgiving Recipes

Jess and I taught the Cooking for the Holidays cooking class as a part of Try Vegan PDX. It was tons of fun! We had 16 people taking the hands-on class and they were all super nice. I have taught a few cooking classes before, but this was a first for Jess who did awesome! She'll have to be convinced to do more of them.

My portion of the cooking class was the Thanksgiving Gluten Roast and the Flaky Pie Crust. I developed the gluten roast recipe many years ago to share with my family on Thanksgiving. Most people would guess I would not be a fan of Thanksgiving since it is otherwise known as "turkey day" and did not had very ethical roots. I say lets take back the day to celebrate our families and communities. I love creating tasty recipes for all to enjoy and trying my best to support others in sparing a turkey.

Thanksgiving Gluten Roast

Gluten mixture-
4 cups Vital Wheat Gluten Flour
1 Tb. Nutritional Yeast
1 Tb. Marjoram
1 Tb. Onion Powder
1 Tb. Sage
2 tsp. Salt
3 cups Warm Water
¼ cup Tamari
½ cup Oil

Onion mixture-

1 cup Onion, chopped

¼ cup Oil

½ cup Nutritional Yeast

1 Tb. Paprika

1 cup Tahini

1 Tb. Salt

Basting Liquid-

¼ cup Sesame Oil
2 Tb. Tamari

Mix together all the wet ingredients for the gluten mixture in one bowl. In a separate bowl, mix together the dry ingredients. Pour the wet ingredients into the dry, stirring quickly. This will form a sponge-like dough. Knead the dough a few seconds so the dough will tighten up a bit.

For the onion mixture, fry the onion in the oil until soft and starting to brown. In a small bowl, combine the cooking onion and the rest of the ingredients together. In a food processor, blend together the gluten and onion mixture, ¼ the amount at a time. Process the mixtures for about 10 seconds. A blender can work as well but you will want to blend in smaller batches. Set the processed dough in a bowl and slightly blend all the mixtures together. Oil a 9 x 13-inch baking pan. Place about 4 cups of stuffing in the middle of the pan and form into a neat mound. Form the gluten mixture over the stuffing and slightly fold in the edges.

Blend the oil and tamari of the basting liquid together and brush the outside of the roast with this basting liquid. Use about half the basting liquid and reserve the rest for later. Bake the loaf at 375ºF for 1 hour. Half way through, remove the roast from the oven and brush with the remaining basting liquid.

*Optional: Surround the roast with cut potatoes, carrots and other vegetables and pour basting liquid over them as well. Tastes great!

Later this week I will post a recipe for stuffing which works perfect for this gluten roast recipe.

Jess found a great Pecan pie recipe for us to use for the class which is the filling in the pie. This was not too sweet and had a great texture.

Flaky Pie Crust

1 ½ cups Unbleached White Flour
½ cup Soy Margarine (Cold)
½ tsp Sea Salt
4-6 Tb Ice Water

Place flour and salt in medium-size bowl. Break up margarine and cut into flour with a pastry cutter until there are pea-sized pieces of dough. Slowly add ice water and blend with fork. Do not overwork; blend until just mixed and dough holds together. Use a rolling pin to roll the dough to be slightly larger than your pie pan. Place in pie pan and form dough as desired.

Dough can be used right away or cover with plastic wrap and store in the refrigerator. Place pie contents on top of crust and bake according to pie instructions. Makes one 9-inch pie crust.

Thanks to Jess for teaching the class with me and for everyone who attended the class!

Thanks to Chris Emery for taking the photos!