Beef “Faux”-ganoff

I haven’t consumed any land-based animals in well over a decade (I do eat fish), but even back in my childhood when I did eat meat, my family rarely ate red meat, and when we did it was generally once a year hamburgers on the grill in the summer and once a year beef stew in the winter. Beef dishes have always remained a mystery to me – not because my mother cannot cook them, but because I was raised in a health conscious household, and any meal revolving around red meat did not make the cut.

I don’t know if I’ve mentioned this before, but back in college, I participated in intramural fencing, and one semester I had room for an extra credit, so I took fencing as a class for an easy A, which wound up being a lame A-. While we were actively fencing, the instructor would yell out various facts, like the number of quarks in a proton (three) or who defeated Napoleon at the Battle of Waterloo (Duke of Wellington and Gebhard von Blucher). When it came time for our final at the end of the year, we had both a performance final, which I scored perfectly, and a written final… which tested us not on fencing… but on all the random facts that he had spouted during the course.

Quite humorously, one student associated the Battle of Waterloo victor with a beef dish… but couldn’t quite place which one. Unable to recall Wellington, he finally gave up and wrote down “General Stroganoff” as his answer. When the pompous English-born instructor told the class about this, it resulted in many laughs, followed by a 10 minute lecture on how it was such a “stupid answer” because how could anyone possibly associate Beef Stroganoff with England? At this point, I realized that I had no idea what was involved in either, and made a note just for my own knowledge to go home and look it up.

A few days later, I decided to give a whirl at my own meat-free version of beef stroganoff, which Husband has since re-named Beef Fauxganoff… but he’s been willingly eating it ever since!

Beef Fauxganoff

Ingredients:

• 2 tablespoons butter
• 1 pound soy crumbles
• 1/2 cup chopped shallots
• 1/2 pound cremini mushrooms, sliced
• 1/2 teaspoon dried tarragon
• 1/2 teaspoon nutmeg
• 1/2 teaspoon onion powder
• 1 cup light sour cream
• 1/2 pound whole wheat egg noodles

Directions;

1. Melt butter in a large pan and cook shallots. Add frozen soy crumbles until warm.
2. Add the mushrooms, tarragon, and nutmeg. Stir occasionally for about 5 minutes.
3. Add the sour cream after reducing heat to low. Stir well.
4. Serve over cooked egg noodles.