Seitan Panini and Jalapeno Poppers

Sunday, February 2

Seitan Panini and Jalapeno Poppers

Rating: 4.5

Are you ready for some football? OK, I’m not really a football fan, but Seth likes it, so I watch with him. We wanted to make something fun and superbowl-ish for dinner. Neither of us is crazy about buffalo anything, so there would be no vegan versions of buffalo wings for us. We settled on paninis, which we haven’t had for quite a while. We first started making these based on a recipe in The Vegan Table, but you really don’t need a recipe to make a crazy good panini. I picked up a loaf of sourdough from the bakery at the grocery store, and it was so fresh, it was still warm. Score. A quick batch of pesto and we were on our way to panini bliss. I had some seitan in the freezer, so I thawed it out, cut off some thin slices, and pan-seared them with a little olive oil, garlic salt, and oregano. Nothing fancy, just wanted to give them some extra flavor. Once the seitan was done, I sautéed some spinach. Now I was ready to build a sandwich, something I take very seriously. (not really) I smeared the bread with pesto, and then I piled it high with the seitan, spinach, tomato slices, red onion and avocado slices. Since we don’t have a panini press, I use our cast-iron grill pan and weight to press the sandwich. I also break toothpicks in half and use them to hold the sandwich together so it stays neat and tidy when I flip it over. I also made some baked jalapeno poppers, which I’d been dying to do since I first saw this recipe from Vegan Richa posted to Facebook by Veg News. They are really easy to do, and are so crazy good. Seth kept calling them “EXTREME JALAPENO POPPERS” in a reference to the movie Office Space, but I did not wear any flair while I made them. Anyway, the filling is actually a dip made from cashews, white beans, nooch and stuff and it’s a small miracle we had enough left to fill the peppers after we’d, um, “taste-tested” it. It’s crazy good. We will be making it often. After the dip is made, it’s just a matter of breading and baking the peppers. I used a mixture of panko and whole wheat breadcrumbs because I wanted to mix up the texture a little bit. I think I got the breadcrumb mixture a little too thick on the tops of the poppers, but man were they good. Seriously. You should make them. We snacked on the little bit of leftover dip and some guacamole that Seth made before dinner, so we decided to just split one sandwich to have with our poppers while we watched the sporting contest.