A Vegan Called Bacon

I like the Victorians. I like moustaches and pommade; malacca canes and locks of hair in brooches; candlesticks and napkin rings; claret decanters and fish knives.

my great-great-grandfather, plus crazy beard policy

There was an explosion of Victorian vegetarianism at end of the nineteenth century.  By 1910, London was awash with veggie restaurants, and could boast what was claimed to be “the largest vegetarian restaurant in the world”, equipped with “modem three-tier steamers capable of steaming … 350 cup puddings at one time”, and two ladies’ dining rooms where “as many as 250 business girls avail themselves of the advantage  of a vegetarian meal nearly every day”.

The Order of the Golden Age, a leading voice of vegetarianism during this period, was delighted in 1911 to be able to reprint an article from the Meat Trades Journal stating “vegetarianism is spreading across the country like some loathsome disease.”

I recently came across the Golden Age Cook Book, published in 1898, and packed with Victorian recipes such as “A Border Timbale Of Mock Chicken” and “Cucumber Jelly” (weirdly containing half a pound of gelatine). An irresistible opportunity to do culinary time travel.

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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.

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When I was little, my favourite soup was my grandma’s "Bin Soup".  Bin Soup is made with leftovers that you might otherwise throw out. 

Ever since I started working from home, I’ve been on some sort of soup frenzy during my lunch breaks (I actually work in the kitchen, which is a bit dangerous).  Usually, Bin Soup means a slightly floppy old carrot, a sad, wizened potato, and a handful of lentils, chucked in a pan and simmered in between checking out blogs and emails.  The furthest I’ve ever taken the concept is this dodgy-looking gloop, which was an entire plateful of the previous night’s dinner, blended; surely the most bizarre Bin Soup ever made.

It’s pilaf rice, roasted vegetables (including garlic), cauliflower "cheese" sauce, and a garlic/lemon/tahini dressing (the roses are just there for decoration, but they might as well have gone in too).

It could definitely have done with a bit more water, as you can see.  But oddly enough, it tasted pretty good. 

I suppose if I’m going to take this to its absolute logical conclusion I’m going to have to start using an actual bin.

The other day, Kim wanted “Something With Gravy” the other day for dinner. Her great-aunt Vera calls this kind of comfort food a “Brown Dinner”, a name which we find particularly appealing.

Our usual Brown Dinner is some shop-bought vegan sausages with mash and home-made mushroom gravy. However, the only meaty (read: excuse for gravy) thing in the house was some old TVP chunks. So I rehydrated some shiitake mushrooms, and rehydrated the soy chunks in the leftover mushroom water plus some vegetable bouillon powder. I fried up some onions, the shiitake mushrooms, then the TVP. I added some left-over broth, and threw in some peas and chopped tomatoes. I seasoned it with soy sauce and sesame oil, thickened it with some corn flour, and served it in the middle of a nest of mash. It wasn’t bad.

Anyway, that’s not the point of this post. The secondary point of this post is that when I got the leftovers out the following day, I realised that we had been eating something that looked, and even smelled, like dog food:

The primary point of this post is: look how much nicer it looks on some instant noodles, drizzled with chilli sauce, and sprinkled with sesame seeds.

It looks like dog food on noodles, drizzled with chilli sauce, and sprinkled with sesame seeds, which I think is a whole lot nicer:

I’m going to investigate more instant noodle topping ideas. It made for a proper good meal.

Meat-free restaurants don’t usually span a very wide range. At one end it’s an earthenware bowl of earthy, nutty, lumpy splodge, served with a nutty crust and some earth. At the other end, it’s big white plates, dotted with vegetarian versions of classic British favourites (i.e. things we borrowed from other countries in the early 90s): something Asian with the rice in a pretty pile, or roasted things with peppery leaves and a balsamic reduction.

All of which can be very tasty, but all of which I’ll make at home some time or other. So I was hopping from foot to foot and squealing a little bit when we decided to go to Saf, a vegan restaurant that does the contemporary cuisine thing: little fiddly towers of things I don’t normally eat, plated with smears of contrived juice I’d never bother to make myself.

When we arrived, the place was all mood lighting and elegant furniture, and packed with Shoreditch’s finest. (For the benefit of non-Londoners, this means beautiful people, with surprising haircuts and serious spectacles). It looked very clean and a little bit special. Which, being nothing like our kitchen, is a good prelude to getting food I wouldn’t get at home.

First of all, we were presented with a fancy cocktail list. It’s extensive and exciting, and nearly makes you drunk reading it. (That, combined with the dim lighting means my photos are rubbish). Unfortunately, we had to wait nearly 30 minutes for them, after which a lot of the hand-rubbing anticipation had worn off. Kim’s Mojito Rosa (a mojito with sour cherry infused rum) was the best – still recognisably a mojito, but you could really taste the cherry. My Jasmine Pearl Martini, however, pretty much tasted like a Martini. Overall, these cocktails were very good, though not really as excitingly different as their names would suggest.

We loved our starters. The raw butterbean hummus was creamy and the wafers of bread were crunchy. The gazpacho (above) was very interesting: it involved tomato, red onion, and melon, if I remember correctly. It looked stunning, and tasted good. Most exciting of all was what I assume to be something of a signature dish: cheese and caviar on biscuits. The cheese was made of cashew nuts, the biscuits were raw and very, very crispy, and the caviar was introduced to us personally. Apparently someone had injected some kind of fruit juice into some kind of seaweed-based jelly, thousands and thousands of times, to create these little clusters of wobbly balls.

The mains were definitely less unusual and exciting. The best dish was the buckwheat risotto, which was creamy and had a lovely bite to it, was definitely something I might have made at home. The Buddha Bowl (tofu, sambal, kimchee etc; below) was also excellent, but again, a disappointingly ordinary concept.

The two raw dishes we ate were the most exciting-sounding things, yet not so pleasant to eat. A mushroom stack gave us a thrill of excitement followed by mild nausea, both feelings due to its profoundly mushroomy mushroomness. You could just about manage half a forkful. The lasagne, presented beautifully (in a stack, again) was a fairly unappetising mix of dull and similar earthy flavours, and was on the chewy side of chewy.

When it comes to desserts, I’m not so sure that novelty and interest are necessarily good things. I guess Saf agrees, because the dessert menu was largely ordinary but delicious-sounding, and desserts turned out to be largely ordinary and delicious. The ice cream was excellent and when the Ganache Tart was shared around, everyone make little moaning noises. But, because I’m obsessed with novelty food, I stupidly went for the Superfood platter. I can’t remember exactly what it involved any more, other than some goji berries made an appearance, but I can remember that it was a smorgasbord of tough, dry, dull, and sickly morsels. (And some nice ice cream).

We finished with a pretty hefty bill, but to be fair, this was because we’d all got carried away with the booze. The actual food, considering the work that’s gone into it, was pretty cheap.

Overall, the experience left me impressed, excited and cynical at the same time. A bit like the prospect of an Obama presidency.

On the one hand, exciting-sounding food often tasted disappointing, and the best tasting stuff was quite ordinary in concept.

On the other hand, it was wonderful to see absurdly elaborate food and drink, presented impeccably to a packed out venue of trendy-somethings, who were presumably either unaware or uninterested in the fact it was mostly-raw vegan. Interestingly, most of the marketing literature calls it ‘botanical’ food; I am very happy with this because I’m increasingly uncomfortable with the label ‘vegan’, and what’s more, I doubt it would be so full if it was called “The Virtuous Vegan”.

In the end, the caviar and cheese dish is what really streams out rays of slivery light in my memory. It made me think that taste and presentation are only two thirds of the ingredients of a really good meal. The other third is a good story. A hand-syringed drop of fruit juice encased in seaweed jelly makes me think of a bent-over, squinting, line cook, swearing under her breath about the smug scientific chef who came up with the bloody idea. Caviar just makes me think of dead pregnant fish.

I just love the idea of going all scientific about cooking. That’s why I did a comparative table of Chinese cheese a few months ago, and why I tried making mapo tofu without boiling the tofu first. I don’t really know why; I just think it’s kind of cool. You know, like, cool to do comparative cooking experiments with vegan ingredients. This is the kind of reason I never used to get Valentines cards at school.

My very good friends at Mungo’s Hifi Sound System have been doing a night called Dub and Grub in Glasgow for the past seven years. They take over a pub venue, play dub music, and cook a set meal for super cheap (£8 for three courses). And it’s completely vegan: partly because of the dub reggae / Rastafarian / vegan connection, but mainly because they play in a vegan pub (The 78, which was recently listed in the top ten veggie restaurants in the country).

Now we’ve moved to Glasgow, I’ve been helping out with Dub and Grub, and last week got to help design a menu. You have to be prepared to make 100 mains, maybe 30 starters, and 30 desserts. Cooking for that many people means your mistakes get amplified, so you need to be sure you’ve got the recipe right. So, the day before, I launched myself into obsessive, girl-repelling experiments.

For the starter, I wanted to do vegetable tempura. I’d been amazed when we went to Japan by how easy it was to make. Our friend Seiko made a batter which contained only flour and water, and said the most important thing was to keep the batter cold (which she did by floating ice cubes in it). But other recipes variously call for baking soda, beer, soda water, and corn flour.

Because I’ve got more experiments to write about, I’ll skip the tables and jump to the conclusion. It does matter about the temperature of the water; if you have a warm batter, the tempura tastes a little burned. Corn flour doesn’t make a noticeable difference, but fizzy stuff does: still-fizzing beer and/or a small spoon of baking soda both make bubbles in the batter as it fries, making it lighter and crispier. The one on the left is with water, the one on the right is with beer. You can really see the difference.

The next experiment was the curry. For years we have been making a Japanese curry taught us by Taka, a fellow student when Kim was at university. It’s astonishingly tasty for something so simple. Simply fry up roughly chopped onion (maybe letting it brown a little); add equal amounts of potato and carrot in large chunks; nearly cover them in water with a few good dashes of soy sauce; add a drop of sesame oil and sugar to taste. Boil until slightly mushy.

Then, in Hong Kong, we had an amazing home-style Japanese curry which was richer and spicier than Taka’s curry. Trying to recreate it when we got home, I found that the secret ingredient is S&B Golden Curry Sauce. It’s simply roughly chopped onion, carrot and potato, in water, with an S&B curry cube dissolved in it. Super simple, and what nearly everyone in Japan does – even, apparently, chefs. But it resembles cheating, and what’s more, S&B curry cubes are 50p per person; a silly amount to spend when you’re mass catering on a budget.

So, my next experiment was a three-way face-off between Taka’s curry, an S&B curry, and my own attempt to recreate that elusive S&B flavour using only my wits and an internet search engine for inspiration. Here’s the showdown in action:

I was pleased that my own curry worked. I also trialled frying breaded slabs of aubergine to replace the breaded pork that would traditionally be served with curry in Japan. I did slightly prefer the S&B version, and it is super-simple (Vegan Lunch Box blogged the cube method recently). But I had used a packet curry powder, and decided that I could do better with my own spices and some inspiration from Justhungry.

Making it all for Dub & Grub on the day was an adrenaline rollercoaster. My recipe included a whole load of apples and bananas to provide the sweetness (instead of sugar), and for a while it was touch and go if it would taste like a weird, sickly stew; but it all came together in the end. We prepared as much as possible in advance, such as this vast stack of breaded aubergine slices:

In the event, it rained slabs of icy water for a couple of hours before Dub & Grub, so the place was pretty quiet; we only sold about 50 covers, which was disappointing. On the other hand, we got a whole load of enthusiastic feedback, with superlatives and happy faces filtering through the serving hatch. So I was really happy, and would love to do it again. So, if you have any suggestions for future Dub and Grub meals (3 courses, tasty, doable in quantity, on a budget), I would love your inspiration.

Here’s the recipe:

Japanese Katsu Curry (serves 100)

For the stew:

• 15 large cooking apples, peeled and cut into chunks
• 10 large bananas, peeled and cut into chunks
• 5 litres of weak stock
• 25 large onions
• 40 medium potatos
• 40 medium carrots
• 1 bottle brown sauce
• 350ml light soy sauce
• 3 cups of potato starch
• 4 tablespoons ground turmeric
• 4 tablespoons ground coriander
• 2.5 tablespoons ground cumin
• 2 tsp ground cardamon
• 1 tsp ground black pepper
• 1 tsp chilli powder
• 1/2 tsp ground cloves
• 1/2 tsp ground fennel

For the breaded aubergines:

• 25 aubergines, cut into 1/2” slices crossways
• 150g plain white flour
• salt to taste
• 6 x 250g bags of Japanese Panko (breadcrumbs)

To prepare:

1. Boil the apples and bananas in the stock until mushy
2. Blend them together with the brown sauce, soy sauce, potato starch, spices. Add more sugar to taste if necessary (this is supposed to be a salty/sweet curry).
3. In a separate pan, fry the onion, then get the potato and carrot sweating
4. Add the curry sauce and continue to cook until the veg are soft
5. Make a batter by whisking water into the flour and salt until it’s just runny
6. Dip aubergine slices in the batter and then into breadcrumbs; press the breadcrumbs onto the slices
7. Deep fry the slices until golden brown
8. Serve with Japanese rice, with plenty of curry sauce all over both the rice and the aubergine slices

Bonus picture:

The bottom of the curry pan was satisfyingly encrusted after a few hours of keeping the curry hot:

Thanks to the excellent Beijingveg.com website, during our five weeks in Beijing we were able to amass enough mock meats to satisfy any gluten glutton.

Pure Lotus is supposed by most listings magazines to be the best vegetarian restaurant in Beijing. We found the food quite good, but the way it was served was distracting. The menus are the size of small tombstones and as easy to hold. The dishes have names like “grand swallow nose treasure hot hot cold cold.” (I made that up but they honestly were that silly). And the serving dishes were enormous splats of porcelain, with design features like big holes in the side through which scalding hot liquids could pour.

The vegetable dishes were disappointing, but the mock meats were pretty good. This was where we had the most delicious mock fish we’ve tasted: a soft, flakey ‘meat’, with a thick ‘skin’ of pleasantly chewy seaweed, served steaming hot, in a delicious sweet, dark, bubbling sauce. The mock ribs were decent, but I wasn´t sure about the ´bones´. Having a bit of wood in my mouth just felt wierd. (Elsewhere we´ve had versions with edible ‘bones’ such as celery or lotus root. Much better.)

So, Pure Lotus, while it had some excellent dishes, was overrated, over priced, and silly. Having said that, I do agree with my friend Diana that the dry ice fruit at the end was good silly. And the teacups were cool.

My personal eating highlight in Beijing has been eating with the Vegan Social Club of Beijing at Still Thoughts. The food is reasonably priced, and there’s a good selection of dishes. I ‘m not sure it’s the best vegan food in Beijing; but eating in a group of 10 – 20 other veggies means you get to try pretty much everything on the menu. Highlights included a ‘crispy duck’ of fried tofu skin wrapped around dark, meaty mushrooms; large, soft, slightly spicy green peppers in a black bean sauce (something like a Chinese pimientos del padron); and long, thin aubergine, sliced crossways, with garlic and seitan stuffed between the slices. The green vegetables here were fresh and crunchy.

If that was my favourite eating experience, the restaurant that worked best without needing a big, fun crowd of fellow veggies was Bodhi Sake. It was in a beautiful setting: the courtyards and rooms of a Buddhist temple hung with lanterns and art. The menu had a good selection of vegetables and mock meats. The food was presented beautifully. We had the most memorable mock meat we’ve had yet: pork belly. It was served in an earthenware vessel on top of a bed of salty greens. The ‘belly’ was a type of gluten with a slightly smokey flavour; the ‘fat’ was konjac (or possibly rice-based) and melted in your mouth. We also had a delicious dish of long, dark, string shaped mushrooms, fried until nearly crispy.

As for my favourite individual dishes, the best greens we had were at Lotus in Moonlight. They also did a fantastic dish of tiny cubes of soft tofu, fried to a salty crisp on the outside, while keeping the inside silken.

My favourite mock duck was the duck at Beihe. It had a good savoury taste, a pleasant texture, and was served with celery instead of cucmber, which worked very well. I suspect the real reason I liked it so much was that it came in a comedy “duck” shape.

The best spicy dish was fish at the restaurant by the Big Bell temple. It blew my head off. I liked it so much I went back again on another visit to Beijing. It had a nice atmosphere (maybe a bit too dark though) and that dish was amazing. Also good was the little chunks of ‘lamb’. The place was hard to find, but fantastic value and really tasty.

An honourable mention goes to Cat restaurant, which to my knowledge is the only organic vegetarian restaurant in Beijing. They spoke great English, were incredibly friendly, and served the freshest vegetables I had.

A finally, a dishonourable mention to Gong De Lin. It is often mentioned in guidebooks as thir token vegetarian restaurant, but I have no idea why. It was without doubt the worst meal we’ve had in a Chinese vegetarian restaurant – for example, a mock fish which was a lump of mashed potato with a gluey coating, in a pool of watered down tomato ketchup. Don’t go!

I’m missing Beijing. It´s an interesting city, and a great place to be vegan.