“The pleasures of a bloomy-rind cheese begin before you slice into it — the softly wrinkled wheel, dappled and dimpled like the face of the moon. The promising stink, getting stronger by the minute.
“But I considered the velvety rind of a two-pound Barn Cat with more than a glint of skepticism. This cheese was made of cashews and coconut, run through with a dark line of vegetable ash, and I doubted these ingredients could undergo any kind of meaningful transformation.
“I was wrong. I was unprepared for the mellow, pleasingly dank flavors of a soft-ripened goat cheese, for the mildly peppery tang, for the dense, luxurious creaminess.”
I’m not going to lie, I’m like Judas on this one: I’ll believe it when I taste it. It certainly all looks like cheese:
The amber cheeses are Kirsten Maitland and Fred Zwar’s Chebrie, a vegan Cheddar-Brie hybrid; at left and right, their truffle Brie, and at center, plain vegan Brie. —Jessica Attie for The New York Times
“When I was a vegetarian, in college, cheese was the final boss for everyone I knew considering veganism, the last and most difficult food to relinquish. And it seemed no one could win — cheese made from milk was too powerfully delicious, and the vegan cheeses available in specialty stores were bland, pale simulacra.
“This newer generation of packaged cheese is more convincing, in part, because it’s produced in roughly the same way as dairy cheeses, made from cultured plant-based milks that develop texture and flavor through fermentation, rather than solely through additives.
“On a much smaller scale, specialty cheesemakers like Blue Heron Creamery in Vancouver, British Columbia; the Herbivorous Butcher in Minneapolis; and Vtopian Artisan Cheeses, in Portland, Ore., are pushing the limits of those fermentations to create vegan cheeses with flavors and textures I’d previously thought impossible.
“To make that ashy-centered Barn Cat, Stephen Babaki of Conscious Cultures Creamery, in Philadelphia, inoculates the surface with various strains of Penicillium candidum, typically used to ripen Camembert and Brie, then ages it for two to three weeks.
“You can’t fake time,” Mr. Babaki said. “And if you don’t give cheese time, it can’t develop flavor.”
Lots more interesting stuff in the article.
I once ordered Spanish alcohol-free wine just to see what it tasted like after seeing rave reviews online.
It was awful. Let’s hope the vegan cheese is following a better path. It sure looks like it might be!