Christopher J. Flores <ooasis@webtv.net>, <cjf01@gnofn.org>
http://www.vegweb.com/food/subs/1822.shtml
http://www.gnofn.org/~oxoasis

Servings: 5

Ingredients:

• 5lb white flour
• Ginger (optional)
• Chile (optional)
• Tumeric (optional)
• Soy Sauce (optional)
• Nutritional Yeast (optional)

Make a smooth dough in the evening. Fill the large bowl with cold
water and place dough in it also. Seal the bowl with the plastic wrap
and place it in the refrigerator over night.

Late next morning take the dough out and throw out the water. Put the
dough in a large colander inside of a large bowl. Pour a stream of
room temperature water over the dough as it is vigorously kneaded.
Keep rinsing and kneading the dough in the water until all of the
white wheat starch is washed away.

Place the wheat gluten which should have lost all white colour, into
an open container for microwave cooking. The gluten should be strained
of water as much as possible. Microwave the wheat gluten for 45
minutes or until it develops a somewhat hard skin on the top. The
gluten should not be covered when cooking. It may rise as much as
bread so make sure it has plenty of room.

After it is well cooked take it out and dump it upside down into
another bowl and allowed to cool. After it is cool enough to handle it
needs to be cut into bite size pieces. The bite size pieces can be
refrigerated in a sealed container at least for a few days. Add some
bite size pieces of cooked wheat gluten in with your favorite
vegetable preparation.

Gluten is a protein and this makes a preparation more desirable.
However, some people may have difficulty in digesting gluten. To
remedy this use a small amount of chile as well as digestive aids like
ginger and turmeric in your preparation. Also it is wise not to make
the gluten the main meal. Since gluten is made from wheat it might be
best to cut down on other wheat preparations in the meal.

Use soy sauce and nutritional yeast to add a cheese flavor to your
preparation. Of course, you must account for the salt in the soy
sauce. You may like to salvage the wheat starch that is washed away to
uncover the gluten. If you have used good quality flour you may want
to use this wheat starch for gravy and other preparations.

Serving Idea:

Try sprinkling the small chunks of cooked gluten with soy sauce, olive
oil, and which can also be mixed with nutritional yeast. This should
be done before adding the chunks of wheat gluten to another vegetable
preparation.

I like to prepare the small chunks of wheat gluten like this before
covering them with "Ugma" a preparation I learned while living in the
Hare Krsna temple. Your vegetable preparation should have enough juice
to soak the chunks of wheat gluten. The chunks of wheat gluten will
expand once soaked. I've noticed that olive oil tends to combine
rather well with tomato sauce.