...working through it...
There is no predicting vegan cheese. Lord love them for trying, but it does add an extra layer of effort (and a frisson of anticipation) to try and figure out what vegan cheese will bring to a dish. Most of what I make from this book will be vegan-ified (though there are plenty of straight vegan dishes in here), so the cheese situation is something I need to start applying these tasting lessons to immediately. Which does seem to be a bit like preparing fugu blindfold. Will this vague foot smell enhance these collected beans - or twist poison into every mouthful?
It’s that instinct thing again - I am vv familiar with the dairy kind. The scent of a stilton or a reblochon gives me a good idea of what it will taste like a moment from now, and from that I can predict the affect (effect? Not checking) of heat on it. What will melting stilton on cannellini beans do? Make a too-liquid mess on top of some now super-acidic flavour beans. Which some of us love, actually.
The recipe calls for American cheese - or what I like to think of as Easi-Singles (I don’t neccessarily like to think of them as Easi-Singles, I just do. There marches by a series of sitting in my Granny’s chair after school, folding each slice in half and half again until I had a tower of tiny cheese squares and thought I was being philosophical - how many times can you fold a square in half? Is it more times than paper? Can I halve each piece and keep the integrity of the tower? How many folds was too many and heated up the cheese to the point of paste?1). The beauty of such a cheese is that it’s mostly for texture. It has the idea of a cheese flavour, and will give a crisp surface blanket to the melt within. The closet on the vegan market that I’ve tried in the past (won’t dox, if you know, you coco-know) is just appalling. I can eat it (that memory thing - if I bite into a cheesy pizza and can bring to mind all the Sunday-night Goodfellas of my past, then that’s enough for me), but I almost refuse to taste it. Yes, it mostly melts in a familiar way, but you can’t untaste it on every bite - especially if that bite is on something new to the palate and not a well meant “we can make you something vegan” fast food equivalent.
THe cheese I used was fine. The smell was, similar to the story that Subway pumps that scent out into the street, was pungant and yet had no follow through. Part of the issue of vegan cheese, is that follow through. Something about the proportion of fat, or maturing, or mould, or enzymes, or something (why would I know when the cheese people haven’t cracked it? C’mon) means that it usually lacks follow through. The tch tch on the tongue afterward, the (dare I say it?) mouthfeel of it all (she who dares, Wynns2). Also, I’m always a little bit scared to taste it properly because what if I hate it, and then I have a block of fake cheese that’s a very expensive snack for the worms - if they can even eat it!
…
So, it turns out that if you go out for a glass of wine, but that glass is good and you like the proprietor and get chatting to another customer about music and creativity and stuff, then that a turns plural and, well, I’m not going to finish this post now. BUT! Two things!
1) The more I write, the more I have to write down and
2) This is fun. I have a long train tomorrow, so I’m going to finish up some of these threads there.