Recipe: The Alternative Kitchen Shiitake Stuffed Seitan Plait
- Savant Spy - 3 min read
Meet Stu Henshall, musician-turned-baker who appeared on our TV screens in 2015 on The Great British Bake Off. Before this he was touring as a musician with the likes of The Prodigy – talented guy.
Since baking, Stu has turned his passion for food into a business, launching The Alternative Kitchen, a plant-based cooking empire that now includes books, magazines, bespoke catering and a successful supper club. Stu now juggles this with raising two young children, admitting that - while life may not be as rock and roll - he probably gets a similar amount of sleep. We asked Stu to create a recipe for us that could be a classic winter warmer – here’s what he came up with.
Shiitake Stuffed Seitan Plait
Ingredients:
For the stuffing:
Olive oil 170g shiitake mushrooms sliced 2 leeks, sliced 3 cloves of garlic, minced 1 tbsp dried thyme ½ cup breadcrumbs 1 vegetable stock cube Juice of ½ a lemon Salt and Pepper to season
For the roast:
3 cloves garlic ½ can pinto beans 325mls of vegetable stock 3 tbsp soy sauce 4 sundried tomatoes 2 tbsp olive oil or oil from sundried tomatoes 2 cups vital wheat gluten 1/3 cup nutritional yeast 1 teaspoon sweet paprika 1 teaspoon dried thyme
1 teaspoon dried sage Pepper to season 320g pack of ready rolled puff pastry
Directions:
For the filling:
- Preheat the oven to 170c/gas mark 3
- For the stuffing, fry mushrooms and leeks in oil until soft, then add the salt, pepper, garlic and thyme. Cook for another minute
- Crumble the stock cube into the pan and add a squeeze of lemon and the breadcrumbs. Toss ingredients until the breadcrumbs are lightly toasted
- Blitz the garlic, beans, tomatoes, stock, oil and soy sauce in a processor until smooth
- Combine remaining dry ingredients and blitz again
- Once fully incorporated, transfer the mixture onto a 40cm length of kitchen foil, creating a flattened sausage shape with a 5cm gap on each side
- With the side of your hand, work the mixture flat until it is no more than 1cm thick
- Move the mixture to the lower half of the sheet and, using the foil, roll it over to encase the mixture by overlapping slightly
- Bake it for 40 minutes
To make the plait:
Unroll the puff pastry with the short end facing you. Cut the two furthest away corners off and cut a square out of the two corners facing you.
- Then cut horizontal 10cm lines 2cms apart, leaving one each side until you reach the point closest to you, with the two missing squares
- Once cooled, unwrap the filling with a bread knife slice the ends off to reveal a perfect cylinder
- Place this on the centre of the pastry, folding the top piece of pastry over before plaiting the slats diagonally down to create the plait
- Bake for 15 minutes at 170c/gas mark 3
- Serve hot – and enjoy
