It’s my BIRTH WEEK this week and we have an extraordinarily busy few days planned. We tend to be pretty low key around here–our big excitement for the day is often simply walking the dogs…or making a new recipe. Thus, the idea of having TWO dinner parties in one week is unusual for us. PLUS, we’re also going into town on Wednesday for my birthday dinner. We’ll be needing lots of extra naps!

The first group is coming up on Thursday (and it’s actually a lunch party for six)–a couple of friends from our old KPU days, who both happen to be visiting Hornby with their families. We are the only vegetarian/plant-based members of the group, but they’ve always been game for our vegan/veg offerings in the past, so James decided to create an abbreviated version of the risttafel–seitan skewers with peanut sauce on coconut rice, nasi goreng, and a beet-apple salad.

The second group is coming Friday evening and includes someone I’ve known for close to fifty years–we grew up a street apart in Montreal. Clare and her husband recently relocated to Port Alberni from Osoyoos. She and Bid were friends growing up and have kept in touch for decades. Two others in the party are also celebrating their birthdays this week, so we should have lots of fun….and hopefully lots of my beloved crappy white Safeway birthday cake!! Again, we’ll be the only vegetarian/plant-based members of the group, so James is making the old stand-by: vegetarian lasagne and grilled Caesar salads.

I promised James I would make a loaf of chickwheat for his kebabs, so that’s what I did this morning. However, I decided to double the recipe and experiment with creating seitan chick’n patties with half of the recipe.

So my recipe for today is…

Instant Pot Seitan Chick’n Patties

First off, make up a batch of chickwheat.

Next, divide the dough into eight to ten patties (depending on how big of a patty you like). I like to weigh mine to ensure they are all the same size and cook at the same rate.

Wrap each patty in parchment….

…and then in foil:

Next, pour two cups of water into the Instant Pot and place the steamer at the bottom of the pot. Slide the patties in lengthwise and use Manual to set the timer for one hour (if you choose to include jack fruit in the dough, make that an hour and twenty minutes):

Do a quick release of the Instant Pot and remove the patties and unwrap to cool. The patties should have a slightly browned look to them:

If you like a less-dense chick’n patty (which we do), you can add one can of drained, chopped jack fruit to the dough before you mix it. Just pulse the jack fruit in the food processor a few times.

The patties will also look more textured and, post-steaming, they’ll be a bit softer:

If you choose to go this route, you’ll get about fourteen 100-gram patties.

Now the patties are ready for however you’d like to cook them. You could likely just pan fry them at this point, but I like to be extra when it comes to food (nothing else though–haha!), so here’s what I’m doing…

Next, wet sheets of rice paper and wrap the patties like little burritos in the rice paper.

Next, prepare a dredge and a panko mixture. For the dredge, I usually use some Vegg and warm water, but you could just use some aqua faba. For the panko mixture, I use….

1/2 cup panko

3 TBS nutritional yeast

1 TBS poultry seasoning

That should be enough for three or four patties.

Next, air fry those little suckers for 20 minutes, flipping at the halfway mark.

Now serve up the patties on a nice fresh bun with onions, pickles, and iceberg lettuce…and a nice glob or two of vegan mayo. DELICIOUS!!

And I was thinking out loud this afternoon and said that we’d better not have my crappy white Safeway cake this year for my birthday because James is making a carrot cake for Thursday and Bid’s making a birthday cake for Friday night.

Three cakes, I said out loud, is a bit excessive for one week.

James looked at me with a look of disbelief and said, “Who do you think you’re dealing with, Missy? I’ve already got that crappy white Safeway cake stashed away for tomorrow!!”

And so…..the song of the day is for my lovely James….