A Vegan Called Bacon

It was fish that turned me.  When I was about eight years old, my mum served up fish that had eyes and a tail.  For the first time, I realised that fish fingers were made out of the same things that eat and move and people own as pets.   It sparked a series of nightmares involving swallowing living, wriggling goldfish.  Luckily, I didn’t get nightmares about eating fingers.

(It took me a few more years to get my head round the linguistic tricks used to disguise other edible animals, and fully appreciate the link between pork and Pigs, beef and Cows, and so on.  I must have been a very literal child).

Ever since my fishy nightmares, I’ve had Fish Paranoia.  Especially in Thai restaurants, where my explanations of how I-don’t-eat-fish-sauce-and-it’s-really-important-and-please-write-it-down get met with a wholly unconvincing nod (“yeah, yeah, no fish, whatever”).  Then I’ll spend an hour forlornly pushing things around my plate, tasting fish in everything I put in my mouth (including water).  It’s strange that I don’t get meat-broth paranoia in the same way, considering I’ve probably ended up eating some every other time I eat in an omni restaurant.

But while we were in China and Japan last year, I learned to like the flavour of the sea.  In Japan, the liberal amounts of seaweed are only matched by liberal amounts of fish broth, fish flakes, and fish innards, which really foments fish paranoia.  But still, I persisted in eating seaweed.  In China, we ate mock fish a few times, which was usually gluten faux meat wrapped in seaweed:

In an effort to conquer the paranoia, I recently decided to veganise Cullen Skink.  I have a long-standing plan to veganise traditional Scottish foods.  So doing a traditional Scottish fish soup lets start my Scottish project off, and chase away that fish paranoia, all in one go.

It turns out to be really easy. Veganised, it’s basically onions and potatoes boiled in soy milk, with some flavourings. It tastes of smoke, with a hint of the sea. I’m not sure it’s for everyone, but it’s definitely a bit different.

Ingredients

A carton of soy milk
Two sheets of nori seaweed (in the photo it’s wakame; not strong enough)
Liquid smoke
A big bay leaf
Some sprigs of parsley
An onion
A couple of potatos
A tomato

Method

Gently heat the soymilk, bay leaf, parsley stalks and seaweed in a pan. The seaweed disintegrates so it’s best to put it in an infuser or a bag of muslin. Add very finely chopped potatoes (we want them to disintegrate), and finely chopped onions.

Gently boil for as long as you can be bothered – at least 15 minutes, but a good 30 to get it nice and mushy.

Remove the parsley stalks, bay leaf, and seaweed. Add chopped parley heads and a generous amount of liquid smoke. Season liberally with salt and lots of pepper.

Just before serving, add finely chopped tomato, and serve with a wedge of lemon to be squeezed in before putting it in your mouth.

The tomato and the lemon are what really bring the flavours together, but they also make the soy curdle. The first time round, I added the tomato in the bowl, and it worked OK. For the photo session, I made the mistake of boiling the soup with the tomato, and it curdled. That made it look horrid, but it tasted good.  That is, if you like that kind of thing, and you are OK with Fish Paranoia.

(The other lumps in the soup are seitan, but I wouldn’t bother if I were you. The first time I made it without seitan, and I preferred it).