Your Vegan Christmas Helper
In the past, you could confidently serve a turkey at the Christmas table, but now at least one of your guests is vegetarian, another doesn’t eat gluten and the next is vegan. Especially that last one can be quite a challenge for someone who happily wields a knife over poultry. That’s why the food section Grubstreet of New York Magazine wrote an Encyclopedia of Vegan Food. Your best vegan Christmas helper this year.
For non-vegans, developments in the world of new plant-based food are fairly impenetrable. What, for example, is aquafaba to someone who thinks in terms of butter, cream and eggs, and which sweet-toothed vegans swear by? And what is nutritional yeast?
Aquafaba
Grubstreet, the outstanding food section of New York Magazine, offers a helping hand with an encyclopedia of vegan food. It explains that aquafaba is the cooking liquid from chickpeas, with the same properties as egg white, meaning vegans can now eat meringues too; cauliflower is the vegetable most easily confused with a piece of meat; and jackfruit is the other white meat.
So-called faux fromages (fake cheese) are also explained: ‘A growing number of small artisanal producers are applying traditional cheesemaking techniques such as aging and fermentation to nut milk (cashew is king) to achieve a complexity of flavor that had been sorely lacking until now.’
Without coconut, vegan life is impossible.
Alongside all this useful information, Grubstreet shares the necessary products and addresses available in America. But here, too, more and more is available to buy and eat. For example, plant-based food bar Mr. & Mrs. Watson makes a very decent faux Roquefort.
Coconut
Coconut is praised for its versatility. Without coconut, vegan life is impossible, according to Grubstreet. After all, we use the oil from this fruit of the coconut palm, and make milk, butter, yogurt, sugar and whipped cream from it.
Faux gras made from tahini, cashew cream and herbs also made it into the encyclopedia. As did liquid smoke, which gives any ingredient that unmistakable smoky meat flavor. And nutritional yeast? Those are flakes of fortified yeast that give pizzas, popcorn and pastas a delicious Parmesan-like (umami) flavor.
Vegan wine
Grubstreet concludes with vegan wine. Because animal-free wines, such as alle vins naturels, are also a growing market. And that means that, even as a layperson, you can put together a pretty good plant-based Christmas dinner.
