Want to go vegan? One author's advice: Do it gradually.
If you like reading cookbooks for more than the recipes, you need to read Ann Hodgman, one of the few cookbook writers whose introductions (we call them headnotes) and even recipe names regularly make me chuckle, if not guffaw. Her latest book, “Vegan Food for the Rest of Us: Recipes Even You Will Love,” (Rux Martin/Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2017) is no exception, except now, as you can tell by that title, Hodgman, 60, is bringing her matter-of-fact sense of humor to the topic of vegan cooking, something she has been trying to master since becoming vegetarian in 2009.
Take the introduction to a recipe she calls Cauliflower Steaks (but Let's Not Go Nuts Here): “You can cut a cauliflower into thick slices and call them steaks, but they are not steak and will never be steak, no matter how brown and caramelized they get. So why not call them slices? Well, because ‘steak' is a sexier word.”
I talked with Hodgman about her experiments in vegan cooking. Edited excerpts follow:
Q: There are vegetable-forward cookbooks, but this isn't that. In fact, you include a funny quote from Peg Bracken about the lack of appeal of vegetables.
A: I love vegetables. But when people say all “I need is fresh vegetables” on that desert island, how can they mean it? If you imagine the taste of cabbage, which I like very much, compared to, say, candy, how can it compete?
There's one thing vegan food doesn't naturally have enough of, and it's fat. If you depend only on vegetables, you have to have a source of a kind of vegetable enricher, or it won't taste as good. Vegetables just don't have as much sugar or fat as other foods. Unfortunately, vegetable fats melt more easily, so you have to figure out ways to not turn your cake into a pool of oil.
Q: This book is a journey of experimentation. Why did you approach it that way?
A: I went into the assignment thinking I had to learn to make tofu taste good, to make nondairy cheese taste good. I was dehydrating things, I was sprouting seeds. For a year, I was foundering, and my house was completely filled with vegan products and ingredients. It was when my husband said, “I wouldn't mind never tasting this again” after I tried to make my own seitan that I realized I was going about it the wrong way. I realized, “I'm thinking of this as chemistry, so no wonder I'm tense. This isn't the way Ann Hodgman cooks.” When I decided to make only things I knew I wanted to eat, it got much easier. But I had acquired a certain amount of biochemical knowledge, which I needed.
Q: What's your thinking about meat substitutes?
A: Most of the fake meats I've tried have a grain quality that I find icky when you eat them straight up. I'd rather use a small amount of textured vegetable protein or wheat gluten to create the sensation you're biting into a hamburger. On their own, I don't think they work very well.
Legumes are satisfying, but I think you can't make a good legume burger without including wheat gluten. With hamburgers, what are you looking for? Substance, a crispy exterior and for it not to feel like a mashed-potato patty.
Q: I loved your idea to use vital wheat gluten to add texture to the vegan burgers. It works!
A: I don't think my vegan burgers taste exactly like burgers, but to me they seem as good as burgers.
Q: Any words of advice for aspiring vegans?
A: I can say uncompromisingly that the moral edge goes to those who don't eat meat. That said, food is very important to people emotionally, and it's important to recognize that. Giving up food that has meant so much to you your whole life is a very big project. So do it gradually.
People should become morally more rigorous in their thinking, but better about cutting themselves slack. Food means more to us than sustenance — it's comfort and family. You're asking a lot of yourself to make dietary changes. So honor yourself and do your best.