Mashed Cauliflower with Seitan (No Added Fat)

I wanted to put dinner together quickly and thought that I'd simply overcook cauliflower and make a lumpy mash, then mix in seitan. Cauliflower cooks in very little time ("0 minute" - i.e., just getting up to pressure then stopping cooking), but I thought I'd cook for 4 minutes under pressure. Here is what I did.


Ingredients

• Florets from a head of cauliflower with bigger florets cut down (about 6 cups)
• 2 cloves garlic, roughly chopped
• 1/4 cup water
• Vegan bouillon cube
• 1/4 t garlic powder
• 1T nutritional yeast
• Small shallot
• 8 ounces of seitan cut into 5/8" pieces
• Between 1/8 and 1/4 cup dill pickle, cut into 1/4" cubes

Process

1. I put the cauliflower, garlic, water, and bouillon cube into my Instant Pot pressure cooker and cooked for 4m.
2. After the cooking was done, I waited a few minutes and gently released pressure, then opened the pot.
3. I began, using a potato masher, to mash the cauliflower. I would have succeeded but only after more effort than I had expected, so I transferred the cauliflower to a blender.
4. I added the garlic powder and nutritional yeast, as well as the peeled but not cut shallot, and pulse blended on low-medium for maybe 15 seconds to get a mostly creamy but still slightly chunky consistency.
5. I mixed in, by hand, the seitan. I thought that I would be done and sampled, but the dish needed something else - I came up with the idea of using dill pickle, thinking as well about a potato salad that might include dill pickle. That did the trick! 

Results

Wow, all of us loved dinner! It came out better than I might have hoped.

Ideas for the future

Just a few days ago, I had advocated for cooking cauliflower waterlessly, but the convenience of the pressure cooker was convincing today. I don't think that the cauliflower softened much from if I had cooked it less; if I'm going to blend, I should try a "zero" or 1 minute cook time. I should experiment with pureeing cauliflower and sauteeing to create a crispy cauliflower cake.