The Other White House has been eating more and more vegan food of late, not as part of an organised initiative, such as Veganuary, but just in general. Quite often, one of us will surprise the others, usually at dinner time, with the realisation and subsequent announcement that what we’re eating is totally vegan.

And for the first time the other week we tried seitan. This move was largely inspired by a friend who runs the 100% vegan Café Van Gogh in London and regularly posts images of their famous seitan ribs on Facebook – thanks Steve!

Curious about this relatively unknown (in the UK at least) mock meat, also known as ‘wheat meat’, ‘wheat protein’ and ‘wheat gluten’, we purchased a package from the chiller at our local health food store – the delightful Sheaf Street Health Store.

To be honest, the stuff doesn’t look that appealing. When I unwrapped it, a sort of taupe-coloured substance, not entirely unlike liver, landed somewhat unpromisingly on the chopping board. I persevered and sliced it into pieces reminiscent of ribs, given the recipe we were going for.

I rubbed the seitan ‘ribs’ with a teaspoon of Taste#5 Umami Bomb Vegetarian Garlic Paste (I cannot see any animal derivative in its ingredients, but we’re still getting used to some of the things that vex vegans, so please do tell if you know otherwise) and placed them carefully into an oiled baking dish in a 200C fan oven.

In the meantime, I made up my version of buffalo sauce using: vegan spread, crushed garlic, muscovado sugar, home-made tomato sauce, bought-in hot sauce and seasoning (including a little Jack Daniels!) bringing it up to a boil on the hob. I painted the ‘ribs’ with the sauce and let them crust up a bit in the oven before serving them smothered in the rest.

So, what did it taste like? Well, cooked like this the seitan was surprisingly meat-like in both texture and flavour and slathered in sauce the ribs felt authentic and proved incredibly satisfying – a real finger-licking treat. The only thing I’d do next time is buy two packages instead of one!