One of the things that can often be found in your local Asian store will be Vietnamese Lát Chay. In Vietnamese, Lát means slice and Chay means vegetarian.
These are a type of textured vegetable protein (as discussed before), though they are a little more processed than a plain TVP and have an additional protein source with gluten flour. So definitely not good for coeliacs!
Heo means pig, so Heo Lát Chay are vegan pork slices. As with other TVP products, they need to be reconstituted by soaking in warm water for 20 minutes. They don't have much of their own flavour, so usually take on the flavour of what they are cooked with, but you can also add some additional flavour by reconstituting in a stock.
For this dish, I took 30g of the dried pork slices and put them into 200ml of veggie stock to which I added a couple of teaspoons of soy sauce and a dash of liquid smoke. I left them for 20 minutes to absorb the stock.
I chopped an onion and some mushrooms and put them into a hot pan with some oil to sauté for a few minutes. I chopped the vegan pork slices into smaller pieces and added them into the pan with the onion and mushroom and also added about half of the leftover stock.
When the liquid has reduced a little, I added in about 100ml of my tomato and bean sauce. Allowing this all to cook away, stirring it occasionally, I got on with putting on 120g of pasta.
When the pasta was done I used tongs to transfer it into the sauce. I then added in about a cupful of the pasta water and mixed all to combine and well coat the pasta.
Serve in two warmed pasta bowls and enjoy!