Seitan Medallions with Port & Cherry Reduction Sauce

Dinner 6/02

Seitan Medallions with Port & Cherry Sauce

We had made two seitan "sheets" over the weekend, so we cut the second batch into medallion sized pieces using a round cookie cutter. We seared the medallions on both sides and finished them in the oven (350F for 15 minutes). They were topped with a simple cherry and port reduction sauce.

We made the seitan using the same recipe we use for the Hezbollah Tofu recipes. It's the old-skool way of making it where you rinse out the bread flour until the gluten develops -- the only tweak we make to it is to pound out the seitan until it's about 1/2" thick, then boil it in water for 15 minutes, and then pressure cook it in a flavored broth (water, tamari, garlic, ginger) for another 15 minutes.

Cherry/Port Reduction Sauce
(serves 4)

1 tbs. olive oil
1 small shallot, thinly sliced
1 clove of garlic, sliced
1 tsp. red pepper flakes
24 cherries, pitted
1 cup of port (unfiltered/unfined)*
1 cup of vegetable stock
1 tbs. low sodium tamari
salt and pepper to taste

Heat a saute pan to medium-low, add the olive oil and sweat the shallots for 4-5 minutes. Add the garlic and red pepper flakes and cook for one minute further. Add the cherries and cook for 2-3 minutes. Increase the heat to medium. Off heat, add the port. Return to heat and reduce by half. Add the veg stock and tamari and reduce by half.

Remove 12 pieces of cherries for topping, and set aside. Puree the remaining sauce mixture in a high speed blender until smooth. Return the sauce to the pan and reduce over medium low heat for an additional 5 minutes or until thick enough to coat the back of a spoon quite well. Check for seasoning.

Spoon the sauce over the seitan medallions and top with reserved cherry piece.

* thanks to Anonymous for bringing this up in the comments: I failed to point out that we used a 2002 Coturri Freiberg Zinfandel (which is unfiltered/unfined and has some residual sweetness, and very port like) in place of the port. We usually mention it in recipes that use port, but didn't here, so my apologies...

Tags: seitan, cherry, recipe, vegan, food, dinner, tofu666