Vegetarian Italian Sausage

I made this vegetarian Italian sausage yesterday because I had some free time and the grocery store I went to didn't have any ready made ones in stock (Tofurky makes good ones).  I used this recipe from everydaydish.tv.
   I was surprised when I tried them today in advance of using them in penne alla vodka and discovered they are the best fake meat I've ever had.  Not only is the flavor great (and not very spicy at all the way I made it), but even the texture is good.  I don't normally like to eat seitan plain, but I kept eating this stuff plain and cold.  I want to try it in a crusty hot dog bun with mustard and sauerkraut.  My recipe below will look slightly different from the original in the link because I used what I had.

Ingredients

• 2¼ cups vital wheat gluten
• ½ cup nutritional yeast flakes
• ¼ cup chickpea flour (I apparently used up the gram flour -- Indian split chickpea flour -- in my pantry, so I ended up grinding some dried chickpeas into flour in my Vitamix dry container)
• 2 tbsp vegan Chik'n flavoring
• 2 tbs onion powder
• 1 tbs fennel seed (I have whole fennel seed, so I crushed it roughly with a mortar & pestle first)
• 2 tsp coarsely ground pepper, preferably freshly ground
• 2 tsp ground paprika
• 1 tsp ground smoked paprika
• ½ tsp dried oregano
• 1 tsp salt
• ⅛ tsp ground allspice
• 2 tsp garlic powder
• 2¼ cups cool water
• 2 tbsp olive oil
• 2 tbsp soy sauce (full sodium)

 Directions

1.  Mix together dry ingredients in a large bowl.  Whisk wet ingredients (water, oil, soy sauce) and add to dry ingredient mixture.  Incorporate everything with your hands -- I broke a rubber spatula trying to stir this stuff.  If your dough is too dry, add water in small amounts.

2.  Scoop about 1/2 cup of dough into a square of aluminum foil, roll it into a log shape, and twist it up tight like a Tootsie Roll.  Do the same with the rest of the dough (makes about 8 sausages). 

3.  If you have a steamer, bring water to a boil and put the foiled sausages in the food portion of the steamer and cook for 30 minutes.  If you are like me and don't have a steamer and your vegetable steaming basket is garbage and collapses under the weight of any food, you can do what I did.  I have a wire strainer that looks like it's made of window screen.  I put half the sausages into the strainer over a pot of boiling water and covered the pot with its own lid.  The sausages had to curve a bit, but it was fine.  Cook for 30 minutes, then do the same with the other half of the sausages (because that's how much fits in my strainer at one time).  I kept the sausages wrapped in foil and just put them in a ziploc bag in the fridge until I planned to use them.  (The strainer method is also how I steam vegetables.  I should really just throw away my vegetable steaming basket, but I keep thinking maybe I'm just somehow using it wrong because it had such good reviews on Amazon.)