Having spent quite a lot of time avoiding meat and milk products for research purposes, I came to what is probably the same conclusion everyone else seems to be having: we do have to limit our animal product intake, but we should balance our willingness to scrap entirely a category of food or more not to lose our gastronomic identities.
I admit I was an unsatisfied vegetarian: I often craved meat and charcuterie, and vegan “cheeses” made me downright sad.
The only one I truly enjoyed eating was the Vegetarian Butcher but more for their attitude and marketing message than for the content of their products. Safe for their bitterballen: they will always be the best in the Dutch food ecosystem, at least because you know what they’re made of.
But for the rest, I grew to dislike the idea of vegan or vegetarian replacement of animal products.
Beyond Burger, with its extra-long list of ingredients makes me think hard. At some point there is a short circuit blast in the mind of some of us whereby till yesterday “long ingredient lists” and “if my grandma cannot read it” ingredient lists were pure evil.
But is it tasty?
Boy, it is.
I recently had one Beyond Burger at Brusco on the outskirts of the Portuguese hamlet of Port wine, Leça da Palmeira.
It was tasty, juicy, and delicious. But I could not stop thinking about the long list of ingredients.
Nowadays, a beef slice whose ingredient is a cow is evil.
But alas, I don’t want replacement meat. I don’t want replacement fish.
I don’t consume any of those in manners or anything quantities that disallow me to search for the best products.
And I don’t eat any of them every day.
The more I started delving into our everyday gastronomy in the eastern and northern Mediterranean, the more I found meals shaped in a time and age of scarcity that were mostly based on plants and grains.
One of the most perfect ones I’ve found is called “Ciceri e tria”.
It’s rooted deep in Apulia culinary tradition and connects the love for fresh pasta, deep-fried dough, olive oil and chickpeas that is so typical of my “Al-Andalus”, the time and Age of Enlightenment just before the catholic kings and the popes took back the Iberian peninsula and Sicily and cast them into the dark ages.
I downright love this pasta.
Another vegetarian preparation I like a lot is the Sicilian marvel “parmigiana di melanzane”, where layers of fried aubergine intertwine with hard cheese and tomato sauce.
Finally, a typical preparation of my alpine homeland is spinach knödel, a delicacy for butter and sage.
User Findecanor, on ArsTechnica said it brilliantly:
I am currently a ovo-lacto-vegetarian who loves cheese. Real cheese, aged cheese, blue cheese on gingerbread, pan-fried camembert, real mozzarella on pizza etc.
Are these luxury products: sure.And I think that they should continue to be treated that way: with their high fat content, they are best treated as "sometimes-foods".
At the low rate we are eating those, I don't think we have to give them up.
Instead, I think we can go a long way to reduce CO₂ emissions from farmed ruminants just by reducing our intake of cheaper dairy: dairy that don't have as much of a taste, where it does not matter whether the source is actual dairy or plant-based to begin with.
It is easy for an individual to stop consuming superfluous dairy.I believe people could also do the same with beef. A lot of beef in pre-cooked/processed foods does not actually have to be actual beef — when the taste has been masked by other ingredients. That is superfluous beef.
Instead, save the dairy and beef for dishes in which the taste can be savoured.
The concept of superfluous meat is very dear to me, as I have always tried to substitute meat wherever its specific taste, texture and complexities are not needed.
Ditto for dairy: I say yes to perfectly whipped full-fat cream once in a while, but my everyday Matcha Latte is oat-based. I need butter for the brown butter in which I cook a sole, but I can use oil in a preparation where butter is not needed as an ingredient per se, like a cake, and that can be substituted with no detrimental effect to taste, texture, complexity or composition.
It’s all about the flavour
What do you think? For me, it is all about the flavour, the flavor, the flavor.
This is the reason why I am working hard on some new features for this blog. Come 2024 and you, dear reader, will have some surprises: we will expand our gastronomy discussion to the health and wellbeing aspects of nutrition: pleasure and taste will never be set aside, though, which is sometimes a challenge.
But why should it be challenging to make tasty, healthy and preferably plant-based meals with a touch of bistronomy, everyday eatery, or even straight-out fine dining?
The answer is not very challenging (provided that one has skills and an innovative mindset), and the answer is in the picture above.
The sandwich-creation is a 2023 fall-winter development of Chef Nuno Castro, of Fava Tonka in Porto, Portugal.
Flavour, but also structure are very important... That's why the Beyond burgers are so good! 😋
Reading "cheeses" makes my heart flutter with happiness. Cholesterol will come but it will be worth it.