Vegan panellada

How to make it

1. Thursday night, the soaking. Dissolve 1 tbsp salt in 1500 ml water and soak the chickpeas in it. Soak the beans in another bowl, in plenty of water. Put the dried shiitake in a bowl with 450 ml cold water, weigh them down with a saucer, cover and put it in the fridge.Cold water, not warm: at room temperature an enzyme in the mushroom breaks down the flavour you want to keep. The salt in the soak softens the chickpea skins, so they cook up creamier; that water is thrown away.
2. Friday morning, the mushroom water. Tip the shiitake and their water into a pan and heat to 70 °C, when the water steams and tiny bubbles form on the bottom, without letting it boil. Turn off the heat, cover and leave 10 minutes. Strain through a cloth or a paper coffee filter, squeezing the mushrooms well: you get about 380 ml. Cool the bowl in a larger one of iced water for 10–15 minutes, then refrigerate. Cut off the shiitake stems, chop the caps very fine and refrigerate them too.Between 60 °C and 70 °C dried mushrooms give the most flavour (Kurihara, 2015); covered, the water stays in that range. No thermometer? Turn off the heat as soon as the tiny bubbles appear.
3. The chickpeas and beans. Drain and rinse both. Cover the chickpeas with 1500 ml fresh water, add the kombu and lift it out as soon as the water comes to a boil. Simmer gently, with the pan partly covered, for 1–1½ hours, without salt, until they crush easily between your fingers. Meanwhile, cover the beans with 2000 ml fresh water and boil, uncovered, for 40–50 minutes, until almost tender; drain and throw that water away. Drain the chickpeas over a bowl and keep the water. Mash half the chickpeas with a fork while still hot, to a coarse paste. Cool the chickpeas, their water and the beans in shallow containers and refrigerate them until the afternoon.Taken out early, the kombu adds savour without tasting of the sea. White beans are cooked the same way. Once cooked, chickpeas and beans shouldn't stay out of the fridge more than 2 hours, or 1 hour in hot weather.
4. The spices and saffron. Toast the pepper, coriander, cumin, cinnamon and cloves in a dry pan for 1–2 minutes, until fragrant, and pound them in a mortar to a coarse powder. Set aside 1 tsp of the powder for the seitan and grate the ginger over the rest. Crush the saffron with a pinch of salt and steep it in 4 tbsp warm, not boiling, water for 15–20 minutes. Put half in a small jar and keep the other half, covered, for the afternoon. In a small pan, warm 1 tbsp olive oil with ¼ tsp turmeric over low heat for 30 seconds and add it to the jar, with ½ tbsp of the miso. Stir, close the jar and keep it in the fridge for Saturday.90 threads weigh about 200 mg: far more than a pinch. Raw turmeric tastes chalky; half a minute in the oil is enough.
5. The seitan. In a bowl, mix the gluten, chickpea flour, the teaspoon of spices and the salt. Add 200 ml of the cold mushroom water, the soy sauce and the olive oil and stir into a dough. Knead for only 2–3 minutes: any longer and it turns rubbery. Shape two logs about 5 cm thick and wrap each one snugly in baking paper, then in foil, twisting the ends: the seitan wants to swell, and a snug wrap keeps it firm. Steam for 1 hour, in a steamer basket over boiling water. Let it cool and keep it in the fridge until the afternoon.You can make it on Thursday, with cold water instead of the mushroom water; then all the mushroom water goes into the pot, with less chickpea water. No steamer? Simmer the logs, unwrapped, in homemade vegetable stock, or in water with ½ tsp salt, for 45 minutes with only lazy bubbles: a hard boil makes raw dough spongy.
6. While the seitan steams, the mushrooms. Heat the oven to 230 °C. Cut half the fresh mushrooms into big pieces, 3–4 cm, and chop the rest fine. Toss each batch with 1½ tbsp olive oil and ¼ tsp salt and spread them on two trays. Roast, stirring once, until golden and shrunk by half: 15–20 minutes for the chopped ones, 25–35 minutes for the big pieces. Cool them and refrigerate until the afternoon.First they give up their water, and only then do they colour. Take them out golden, not dark: dark mushrooms pull the dish towards brown.
7. Friday afternoon, browning the seitan. About 2 hours before sundown, set the oven to 100 °C. Tear the seitan by hand into 5–6 cm pieces: rough edges brown better and hold the sauce. In a heavy ovenproof pot of at least 6 litres (a 5-litre pot won't hold it), heat 3 tbsp olive oil over medium-high heat and brown the seitan in two batches, 6–8 minutes per batch, turning, until golden. Lift it out. Trim the tops off the small onions and brown them in the same oil, cut side down, for 3–4 minutes. Lift them out too.Gluten-free: instead of the seitan, 400 g firm smoked tofu, pressed for 20 minutes, cut into 3 cm cubes and browned the same way. Use a miso made without barley, seal with tapioca-starch dough, as in the manioc panellada, and serve with beijus instead of bread.
8. The onions. Turn the heat down to medium-low, add 4 tbsp olive oil, the sliced onions and ½ tsp salt, and scrape the bottom with a wooden spoon. Cook for 35–40 minutes, stirring now and then, until deep gold but not brown. Add the spices, ½ tsp turmeric and the chopped shiitake and stir for 1 minute, until fragrant.Without meat, the onions carry the colour and much of the flavour. No baking soda to hurry them: it turns them to jam and pushes the turmeric towards red.
9. Build the pot. In a small pan, bring 600 ml of liquid to a boil with 18 g fine salt, 1 level tbsp: the rest of the mushroom water (about 180 ml) and chickpea water to make up the amount. Take it off the heat and stir in 1 tbsp miso and the other half of the saffron water. Add the chickpeas, mashed and whole, the beans, the chopped mushrooms and half the hot liquid to the onions, stir and level. On top go the seitan and the big pieces of mushroom, half sunk in, with the small onions (or the potatoes) nestled among them, where an adafina's eggs would go. Pour in the rest of the liquid: it should sit a finger's width below the top of the seitan, moist, not drowned. If it is short, add chickpea water. Lay the pumpkin slices over everything, edge to edge: they are the lid for the night, like the chard in the big Sabbath panellada.Nothing evaporates in a sealed pot: the salt that goes in is the salt that comes out, and at noon it is easy to add more. This takes more liquid than the meat recipe because the seitan and chickpeas drink broth, and there is no meat to give up its juices. The boiling liquid sends the pot into the oven hot, even with cold chickpeas.
10. Seal and bake. Mix the flour with about 90 ml of water into a firm dough. Roll a rope as long as the rim, press it on, set the lid on top and push down to seal. Before sundown, put it in the oven at 100 °C.Check with an oven thermometer: in a hotter oven the broth boils all night and the seitan softens and swells. If your oven won't go down to 100 °C, use a slow cooker of 6 litres or more, on low, for 14–16 hours, layered the same way.
11. Saturday at noon. Take the pot out of the oven, break the seal with the tip of a knife and lift the lid. Lift the small onions (or the potatoes) onto a plate. The pumpkin has fallen apart: stir well, so that it, the mashed chickpeas, the broth and the olive oil come together into a thick, glossy sauce. Spoon it into a deep serving bowl and stir the saffron-and-miso jar in there. Check the salt.In the bowl, not in the pot that came out of the oven, nothing is cooked on the Sabbath, and the miso keeps its aroma. Take the jar out of the fridge in the morning.
12. At the table. Serve each plate with a small onion (or a potato) split in half, like an adafina egg, a drizzle of good olive oil, coriander or mint, and bread. The lemon goes on the plate, in wedges: hours of heat with acid would fade the saffron.Leftovers: into the fridge within 2 hours, or 1 hour above 32 °C; reheat to a boil.