Sequestration Meal #103

I saw a recipe for chickpea fried steaks with milk gravy at Living Vegan a while ago and my immediate reaction was to promise myself I would make it. It took a while, in part because I had to secure some parsley (and I was never going to grow enough at this rate), but I did it. And here we are.

It's like chicken fried steak in some ways, but doesn't really pretend to be. It's not got that meaty texture a lot of vegan meat substitutes would, but it definitely does not have to. It's it's own, glorious thing. It's chickpea fried steak. The flavors are amazing. My gravy is darker than the original, probably because my oil got a bit brown in the course of frying these up, but the milky gravy had the same basic flavor and texture I remember about the standby of the Southwest. I didn't even mind how sad my broccoli had gotten in the fridge.

Some people also call it "country fried steak," incidentally, if you're not familiar with chicken fried steak. It's steak fried in the style of chicken; i.e., battered and pan fried. (If you really want to get confused, see chicken fried chicken, which is chicken in the style of chicken fried steak, i.e., boneless--but none of this matters; nothing I eat has bones anymore.) I can't wait to try one of these babies in a steak sandwich. I may live in the land of cheesesteaks now, but the steak sandwich I knew, invented by Del Rancho in Oklahoma City, was a chicken fried steak with mayo, lettuce, and tomato on a hamburger bun. I don't have a hamburger bun around but I do have some bread, so stand by for what comes next.