You don't win friends with salad

Nor will I win many with the above concoction. This is vegetarian charbonnade. Unlike many of my friends, I haven't abandoned all my moral convictions as of yet. This was my first attempt at cooking with beer. Charbonnade is a Belgian dish. It is basically a beef stew with beer involved. I first read about it on Mark Dredge's blog. Instead of using beef I used white wave seitan (wheat gluten). I dredged the seitan in flour with salt and pepper in it. I browned it and set it aside. I then chopped up a bunch of yellow onion and cooked the hell out of it. I put the seitan back in and added beer, vegetable stock, thyme, bay leaf, apple cider vinegar, and black currant jelly. I then put it in the oven for about an hour and a half. While it was cooking and congealing I whipped up some chips. The end result had the right consistency, but the flavoring was off. It was a bit on the bitter side. I think I made two mistakes. Number one, I used an Imperial Stout homebrew. I would have been better off using a dark Belgian or a brown ale. That is what the recipe called for, however I did not have one lying around. I thought it foolish to buy a nice beer just for cooking. Honestly I think that if I had used a Chimay Blue this would have been a success. I can imagine the dark sweet spicy flavor of the beer giving the dish a lot of character and depth. Perhaps next time. I think then the dish would have benefited from smaller chunks of seitan. This would have allowed for more liquid to be absorbed. That was my second mistake. Although bitter, the chunks were flavorful on the outside but a bit bland on the inside. It may seem like I did not like my meal. It was actually not bad. Definitely a good first attempt at cooking with beer. I ate the veggie charbonnade with a Sierra Nevada Pale Ale, a fine pairing.