Many people see going vegan as giving up certain foods. While that may be strictly true in that animal products of any kind are most definitely off the table, other foods sneak their way into your diet and you’re all the richer for it. What do I mean? Well, there are many foods I eat now that I wouldn’t have eaten before I became vegan. The only reason for this was that I simply didn’t think about eating creatively. Even as a vegetarian, which I’ve been for most of my life, I didn’t consider the wide spectrum of food available to me. It’s funny, even going veggie aged twelve, people asked me (as indeed they do now) ‘What do you eat?’ as though all they do all day is stuff meat into their faces. Come to think of it, maybe that’s not so far fetched…Anyway, what I’m saying is that far from sacrificing flavour for your principles or health, as a vegan you tend to discover a whole new range of tastes that more than make up for any you’ve had to give up.
If you’ve even flicked through a vegan cookbook you may have thought to yourself, what on earth do these people use as ingredients – weirdos. Well, although I’m discovering new food all the time, I’d like to give you a rundown of some unusual vegan ingredients that you may not have heard of, as well as more familiar ones that we vegans use in non-traditional ways.
I’m going to kick off with Nutritional Yeast, or nooch for short. It’s a savoury, almost cheesy tasting non-active yeast that comes in the form of flakes and you can buy it at your local health food store or online. You can use it for all sorts of things, but I like to sprinkle it onto a pasta dish for some extra B12 (some nooch is fortified with it) or spin it into a homemade salad dressing to round out the flavour. There are various recipes for blending nooch with flour, water, mustard and cashews or suchlike to make cheese-style sauces.
This is one of the best from vegan chef Isa Chandra Moscowitz. I also love the one from her cookery book Appetite for Reduction, although she has several others on her website, check them out. I also love to stir nutritional yeast into a risotto at the end instead of parmesan (although vegan parmesan is coming on in leaps and bounds.) See my recipe here. So really, it’s a flexible ingredient that’s great when you’re after that cheesy taste. A little goes a long way, so my advice is to buy yourself a tub and search around for some fun recipes or simply experiment yourself.
[…] I’m going to be honest here, cheese can be a bit of a bugger to give up, but never fear, there are ways you can make it easier on yourself. First of all, if you say ‘I’m addicted to cheese’ I’m likely to believe you. You see, the milk that cheese is made with has high levels of a protein called casein, which is highly addictive. The reason it’s in there is to keep the baby calf coming back to mum for more so they can grow into an adult cow. Unfortunately the stuff has the same effect on people, perhaps explaining in part why some of us are struggling to keep our weight down. But, help is at hand. Vegusto does some devilishly convincing vegan cheese, standing up to the dairy variety in various blind taste tests. Their no-moo melty (great name!) is particularly good on pizzas. I must admit to being nervous of trying a pizza without cheese for the first time as pizza is one of my very favourite foods. To my surprise though, I found that much of the sensory experience that is pizza, has little to do with cheese. The crispy crust, tomato rich sauce and varied toppings were more than enough to keep my cravings at bay. In fact, when you think about it, some pizzas aren’t covered in mozzarella anyway, some just have little discs of goats cheese. This is again something I’ve tried out on my non-vegan friends. Pizza Express do a vegan pizza and because their base is vegan, if you order any of their pizzas without cheese, you’re good to go. I’ve offered friends a slice of mine and they are always pleasantly surprised. If you choose carefully (some of the supermarket dairy free cheeses for example, are quite frankly, gross) then you can have a cheese free life quite happily. You never know until you try, so try! There’s also a vegan ingredient, available from health food stores, called nutritional yeast, or nooch for short. Now I know it doesn’t sound too appetising, but it’s amazing what whizzing these savoury flakes up with some cashews, mustard and turmeric (amongst other things) can do. There are many vegan cheese sauce recipes out there, and they’re definitely worth trying. Nooch can also be sprinkled on top of pasta or any other dish as a kind of parmesan substitute. (See a more detailed description here.) […]