fall back open: baked squash with chard and apple sage seitanic sausage

Happy Fall! the leaves are turning and tumbling to the ground. and we've been getting lots of rain. thankfully, i have some awesome rain boots.

inspired by my friend shawneemonkey, i decided to try my hand at veggie snausages. i found a recipe (YAY PPK!) that sounded just right for what ive been craving... and like a LOT of the veggie sausage recipes out there, this one called for liquid smoke. i made the decision to replace the liquid smoke with worcestershire sauce, since im a pescetarian, and a splashy splash of soy sauce. shawnee is right, there are lots of PPK recipes sans liquid smoke, but apples! and sage! this was clearly needing to be eaten and devoured by yours truly.  i altered the recipe to include:


1 1/2 cups vital wheat gluten
1/4 cup nutritional yeast
spices (i used fresh sage plus rosemary, parsley, onion powder, basil, thyme, and oregano. oh! black pepper! that too)
GARLIC
handful dried apples, chopped
1/2 cup cold mashed taters
2 tsp. worcestershire sauce (i realise that makes these pescetarian but not vegetarian friendly)
3 Tb. olive oil
1/2 tsp. soy sauce
1 tbsp maple syrup
2/3 cup water


mix dry ingredients, mix wet ingredients, combine all and wait for magic gluten strings

my steamer was prepped and ready and i took the dough and made sausage shapes. each shape was plunked onto a piece of foil and rolled a la tootsie roll. all the foil rolls were placed in the steamer for about a half an hour.

meanwhile, i skinned and chopped one butternut squash, drizzled it with olive oil and sage, and baked it at 400/205 degrees for... 20 minutes-ish. i flipped the pieces at around 15 minutes.


and theeeeen, i poached pears in honey, cinnamon, and vanilla sucre. i have no exact measurements for the poaching liquid. i filled up my saucepan about 2/3rds of the way, then plunked a spoonful of honey into the water. i used one packet of vanilla sucre, and one cinnamon stick. the pears were cored from the bottom and their stem was intact. once the pears were poached, i let them chill out, removed the cinnamon stick from the liquid, and reduced it to a lovely syrup.



i washed and prepped some beautiful chard, and made brown butter with fresh sage.


i chopped a few of the sausages (the rest were for my lunch later in the week!) to pan fry them.  once the sausages were browned nicely, i added the squash, and then the chard.  and just before serving (this is where things got a little posh),  i poured on some brown butter.


the chilled pears were lovingly wrapped in dough like mummies (i cheated and bought some flaky crust) and baked.  and the smell OH! the marvelous smell!

we devoured our chard, squash, and sausage while the pears were baking.

and then i put a drizzle of honey pear syrup on a plate and we had dessert.