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Thursday, July 24, 2008

Gluten Loaf

A long time ago a few months after Sarah and I first met, when we were just "hanging out" and going to see Pulp Fiction at the Starship more often than was probably healthy for anyone's mental state Sarah showed up at work with a little paperback cookbook she'd found in her parents' collection of stuff. It was printed by some dirty hippie commune in the early 70's and it was all vegetarian. We were both vegetarians then so we decided we might as well try it out.

Most of the recipes were pretty boring and then we found the section on DIY meat substitutes and its fulsome praise of gluten. You could make anything out of this magical substance; ribs, loaf, burger, whatever. Might as well try that, we thought.

Since we were still "hanging out" and not dating we made our own gluten recipes and called each other on our land lines to talk about the process which was identical to the Wikipedia entry which says
Legend attributes the discovery of gluten to Buddhist monks in 7th century China who sought meat-like ingredients for use in their vegetarian diet.[2] With easily available wheat flour and water they made a dough which they submerged in cold water and kneaded. The water dissolved the starchy components of the dough and left behind an insoluble, gummy mass, 70% to 80% of which was gluten.

I kneaded flour under water for hours, changing the water when it got too cloudy and wound up with a perfectly insoluble, gummy mass. The next step was seasoning and baking. I made gluten loaf and Sarah and her best friend, Sara, made gluten ribs. Later we met up to share our dishes. I think we all took one bite and decided soft pinto burritos at Amigos weren't as bad as we thought.

7 Comments:

Blogger Chris said...

Scaring me Swoof, scaring me bad.

12:11 PM  
Blogger Jennifer said...

What happened to your other blog?

12:29 PM  
Blogger Jennifer said...

I just read the post below. I'm very sorry.

12:30 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Off topic...but have you been to Mi Guadalajara recently? I know its in your neighborhood. I hadn't gone there for about a month or so until today, and was pleased to see that the place seems to be doing well. I love the friendly family that runs this place.

I noticed that the chipotle chicken they make is what you get if you order a chicken taco now, which is great for me since I love chicken tacos and the chipotle chicken they make there is heavenly.

6:46 PM  
Blogger Swoof said...

Didn't really care about the other blog, jennifer, so it suffered and sat there sucking. When are you going to Kuma's?

Messr. T: I stopped in on the way home from work about a month ago for a taco and a chipotle chicken tostada and it was actually quite busy around 5:30 on Tuesday or Wednesday evening. A good sign, I think.

11:21 PM  
Blogger Sara Gilliam said...

omgz sarah and i tried making barbequed gluten in my little apartment at 12th and g.... it cost us an arm and a leg to get all the ingredientz at open harvest, and it ended up being the foulest smelling inedible crap ever!!! so sad.

we both became better cooks, thank god.

2:54 PM  
Blogger Jennifer said...

We'll hopefully be going to Kuma's in the next week or two. I've been past it a few times, but just haven't been in the mood for 20lbs of everything on top of a burger... but we're going! I may just fast for a few days first.

4:48 PM  

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