Harissa Seitan "Wings"

Before we move on to the next stop on the world tour (remember your winter jacket!), I have a short follow-up from Tunisia.  Harissa seemed like a natural for a vegan wing sauce, and this is a super easy recipe, useful for tofu, seitan, tempeh, or any other "meaty" food.

This technique can be used with any hot chili sauce, be it sriracha, red curry paste, chipotle salsa -whatever you like.  Mix one part chili sauce with about half as much Earth Balance margarine, mixing together over low heat on the stove top.  Toss the results with whatever "wings" you're using - baked tofu, fried tempeh, etc.  In this case it was breaded and fried seitan pieces. Serve hot with a nice cooling dip on the side.  For this, I blended together a little silken tofu, along with tahini, fresh lemon juice, minced garlic, and a pinch of salt.

My fried seitan chunks benefit from a couple of hints picked up from The Splendid Table: room-temperature foods tend to behave better when fried, and develop a nicer, crunchy coating.  This worked like a charm, and I won't try to bread and fry anything straight out of the fridge again.  Also, I mixed in a tbsp. of corn starch with the coating of flour, salt, and pepper.  This adhered much better to the seitan bites than my usual breading, which usually is just all-purpose flour and some spices.  These two tips were a big help for me, as I'm often stumped with getting a good, golden brown coating on fried foods.