Protose & Sausage with Dates and Onion

So, I was making up the powder fort spice blend and I just kept thinking eatitwithdateseatitwithdateseatitwithdates so I decided to cook something containing dates.This is kind of high calorie, but that can be alleviated a little by swapping the protose out for tofu (I’d use about 200g probably) or using two sausages instead of one.

Apart from the obvious use of mockmeats containing peanuts and soya… this is feasibly a fairly authentic dish.

Ingredients

• 1/4 block of protose
• 1 veggie sausage
• 1 teaspoon of powder fort
• 6/7 dates
• 1 onion 
• some sweet sherry
• a little water
• a little olive oil
• kale or other green vegetables as an accompaniment

Method

Chop the onion, dates, protose and sausage, and fry in the oil with the powder fort.

Add a tablespoon or two of the cooking sherry, and a little water. You don’t want things swimming in water, just kept moist.

Allow to cook for a few minutes. One everything was in the pan, I started cooking my kale and it was all ready at the same time. Very quick.

Approx: Calories: 630, 68g Carbs (9g Fibre), 21g Fat, 43g Protein.

Possibly Protose

One of my hobbies (if you can call it that) is looking at, and veganising, recipes from other times, languages, culinary traditions etc. Protose was a meat alternative based on peanuts and gluten that was originally invented by Kellogg’s, I believe, in around 1900, and produced up until the year 2000. Sadly, I gather it never had much success.

However, I’ve decided to recreate it. Or emulate it, perhaps. Lets say I’m a food revivalist? That sounds okay. In any case, I’m planning on putting up a load of sort of Medieval recipe over the next week or so. Lots of early recipes are incredibly imprecise regarding quantities and cooking times and temperatures (in the days before gas and electricity and thermometers, one could not simply put the oven on 180C and then go and watch Bones, after all) but this is fine because I only measure things under duress and generally just chuck things together using common sense. Unless I put them on the internet, in which case they’re only slightly imprecise.

ANYWAY, here is the recipe for my crack at protose.

Ingredients

• 50g gluten powder
• 100g gram flour (chick pea flour)
• 100g peanut butter
• vegetable stock (250ml? Not a huge amount.)
• a pinch of salt
• a teaspoon of brown sugar

I use unsweetened, unsalted crunchy peanut butter. If you use sweetened or added-salt peanut butter, omit the salt and sugar, obviously.

Method

Mix the dry ingredients evenly and then add the peanut butter. Rub it between your fingertips until it has a breadcrumb-like consistency. Pour in a little stock, and knead it together to form a dough ball. Taste a little. Isn’t it delicious?

Put in a small oven-safe dish with a lid that fits well and pour over a little more of the stock. You’re going to be half-baking, half-steaming this, so it needs to stay moist. It’s a very, very good idea to oil your dish, as gluten sticks to anything and everything.

Put in the oven at about 180 degree/whatever you cook things on normally. Remember: to be imprecise is to be authentic. Ahem. Remove from the oven after about an hour and allow to cool.

Verdict

Really tupping good. Kind of like if beef and peanuts had a baby. A thousand noms to protose.

Per quarter (~100g): 281 Calories, 18g Carb (2g Fibre), 13G fat, 23g Protein. (Seems high, but is actually fairly similar in calories and protein to dry lentils, gram for gram).