Fake Meat: When Flesh is Not an Option.

I find food in general quite expensive in Germany and i'm almost thankful that i don't eat meat because that would definitely add at least a third to our grocery bills. I eat seafood but since that's rather pricey here, i turn to good ole' fish fingers and canned tuna. Therefore, i'm a Pescaterian.

There was a time that i could live on cheese and bread for days on end if i really had to.

But when we invested in buying a second-hand 4-drawer freezer when we moved here because the landlord's fridge didn't have a freezer attached, our grocery bills shot up again. Damn those frozen pizzas and ice-cream!

Then not too long ago, i was staring down into my shopping cart and realised 80% of the items were either from the frozen section or some kind of fat induced snack. Gross. I don't count calories but why was chocolate always found in our cart? For years i've said i didn't even like chocolate. Proof that taste buds do change.

I guess the problem J and i have is, we can probably eat the same thing over and over till we're blue in the face. That is until we get sick of it.

But then the other day i stumbled upon Sharon's recipe on Soy Gyros. And having never cooked fake meat before, i was intrigued.

I usually can't be bothered about recipes because most of the time our kitchen isn't stocked with enough of the core ingredients. But the only thing missing from her recipe was the main ingredient which was easily accessible by ordering it online here. The site is all in German but somehow i managed to read just enough to find and order what i wanted.

So yay for me and my dodgy German skills!

Here's Luna looking a little unsure about the package that arrived yesterday morning.


And unless you order a huge amount, there's a small delivery charge but that ended up costing more than the 300 gram bag + mixed herbs that i originally wanted. So i decided to add the 1 kilo family pack to my order as well.

I didn't actually know what it would taste like but i'm sure it had to be better than frozen pizza and Kartoffelpuffer (Round shaped potatoe hash browns) that i was stuffing myself with lately.


Nestled inside the box was a dark chocolate Bounty bar suitable for Vegetarians & Vegans. I don't really like dark chocolate. But it was free. And it's chocolate, so i ate it.

*___*

But when it comes to ingredients, i rarely look at its' contents. In fact, in recent years i haven't been so strict on myself when it comes to eating food that had some meat swimming inside. If i'm desperate, i just fish it out and pretend that there wasn't any flesh inside.


So anyway, the dried Soya pieces swelled up the second i poured 500ml of boiling water over them. And then i let it marinate in a concoction of soya sauce, vegetable broth, oil, dried rosemary and a dash of sesame oil. [Click for the full recipe courtesy of Sharon].


6 hours later i squeezed the marinade out and fried them with some of the mixed herbs that i ordered. You don't really need to leave it marinating for that long, i just was preoccupied with work.

Don't they look like mini chicken strips? It's so deceiving! And in some weird way kinda even tastes like chicken.



We ran out of rice and pasta, so instead we ate the Soja Gyros on buttered Three-grain sandwich bread. The little crispy bits reminded me of when i used to eat bacon. It was so yummy!

It was the first time i cooked fake food but rest assured it definitely won't be my last. Vielen Dank Sharon fuer das Rezept!