Pot Roast Seitan by Crescent Dragonwagon

From Epicurious

This is fast and seriously good. Weird as it sounds, try it once and you'll come back to it. Children are thrilled with it too. It's virtually instant to put together, but it does need to simmer for 15 minutes. If you get really crunched, forgo sautéing the onion.

Now to the recipe's provenance. I'll bet my Aunt Gloria — my father's sister — is going to be astonished that I still have the recipe for the meatballs with the totally bizarre but inexplicably delicious cranberry-and-tomato sauce that she gave me back in 1969, and that that self-same recipe has been converted, to surface again almost thirty years later with seitan. You end up with a sweet-sour sauce, given attitude by the horseradish. It's still a wildly improbable combination, still easy, still infinitely better than it has any right to be.

Serve over pasta or any cooked grain or with mashed potatoes.

Yield: Serves 3 or 4

Ingredients

• Cooking spray
• 2 teaspoons mild vegetable oil, such as corn, canola, or peanut
• 1 large onion, thinly sliced
• 1 1/2 cups tomato sauce, commercial or homemade
• 1 can (16 ounces) jellied cranberry sauce
• 1 tablespoon prepared horseradish
• 1 teaspoon dry mustard
• 3 tablespoons red wine vinegar
• 1/4 cup dark vegetable stock (see tip, below) or commercial mushroom stock, or 1 tablespoon tamari or shoyu soy sauce plus 3 tablespoons red wine
• 16 ounces (2 packages) traditional-style seitan, well drained and sliced about 3/8 inch thick

Preparation

1. Heat a large nonstick Dutch oven or one that has been sprayed with cooking spray. When hot, add the oil and onion and sauté over medium heat for about 5 minutes, or until the onion starts to soften.

2. Add the tomato sauce, cranberry sauce, horseradish, dry mustard, vinegar, and stock. Raise the heat and bring the sauce to a hard boil. Lower the heat to medium and simmer, uncovered, stirring occasionally, for about 15 minutes.

3. Add the seitan. Lower the heat to a simmer and cook, covered, for 15 minutes more. Serve hot, or refrigerate overnight, reheat, and serve the next day.