Miyoko Schinner - Artisan vegan cheese: from everyday to gourmet

Artisan

VEGAN

CHEESE

FROM EVERY DAY TO GOURMET

Miyoko Schinner

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Schinner, Miyoko Nishimoto, 1957

Artisan vegan cheese : from everyday to gourmet / Miyoko Schinner.

p. cm.

Includes index.

ISBN 978-1-57067-283-5 (pbk.) ISBN 978-1-57067-927-8 (e-book)
1. Vegan cooking. 2. Cheesemaking. 3. Cooking (Cheese) 4. Dairy-free diet.
I. Title.

TX837.S289 2012

641.6'73dc23

2012012868

Cover and interior design: John Wincek

Photography by Lily Dong, lilydongphotography.com

Printed on recycled paper

Book Publishing Co. is a member of Green Press Initiative. We chose to print this title on paper with postconsumer recycled content, processed without chlorine, which saved the following natural resources:

63 trees

1,839 pounds of solid waste

29,025 gallons of wastewater

6,437 pounds of greenhouse gases

26 million BTU of total energy

For more information, visit greenpressinitiative.org.

Paper calculations from Environmental Defense Paper

Calculator, edf.org/papercalculator.

2012 Miyoko Schinner

All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced by any means whatsoever, except for brief quotations in reviews, without written permission from the publisher.

Printed in the United States

Book Publishing Company

P.O. Box 99

Summertown, TN 38483

888-260-8458

bookpubco.com

ISBN 13: 978-1-57067-283-5

18 17 16 15 14 13 12 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

Calculations for the nutritional analyses in this book are based on the average number of servings listed with the recipes and the average amount of an ingredient if a range is called for. Calculations are rounded up to the nearest gram. If two options for an ingredient are listed, the first one is used. The analyses include oil used for frying. Not included are optional ingredients and serving suggestions.

Contents

by Dixie Mahy

Foreword

At long last we have a great alternative to dairy-based cheese for those who are lactose intolerant or who want a substitute for animal products for any of a number of reasons, including concerns about health because of the cholesterol and saturated fats in dairy products, about the environmental impacts of animal agriculture, or about the often cruel treatment of dairy animals. For many people transitioning to a plant-based diet, the most difficult type of food to give up is cheese. Miyoko Schinner can help you satisfy those cravings with the recipes in this book. Whether you favor sharp Cheddar or rich, creamy Brie, youll find her recipes amazing, and vegans and nonvegans alike will be impressed when you serve these cheeses and dishes made with them. In fact, they may even accuse you of sneaking in some dairy products.

I can easily state that Miyoko is the most talented chef I have known. Over the past decade, she has been doing demos and workshops for groundbreaking physician and author John McDougall, MD, and for World Veg Festival, a celebration of World Vegetarian Day sponsored by San Francisco Vegetarian Society. All of her creations dazzle the taste buds, add pleasure to dining, and will satisfy even epicureans with the most elevated expectations.

In the past, Miyoko has shared her brilliance in her cookbooks Japanese Cooking: Contemporary and Traditional and The New Now and Zen Epicure, which offer a wonderful variety of delicious yet mostly straightforward dishes. Both are great resources for anyone seeking satisfying, healthful alternatives to the standard American diet.

Miyoko took a hiatus from her professional culinary endeavors for a few years to focus on her family, but now shes back, and we welcome her with open arms. Between this book and her television series, Miyokos Kitchen, we can all once again enjoy her elegant and healthful creations.

Dixie Mahy

PRESIDENT, SAN FRANCISCO VEGETARIAN SOCIETY

Preface

My Year of Vegan Cheeses

I have been wanting to write this book for thirty years. Thats not to say that I had a trove of vegan cheese recipes ready to be compiled into a book thirty years ago; back then they were just flickers of ideas floating around my mind. But I knew that one day I would develop some really credible vegan cheeses, and I kept promising people Id do that. Well, this has been my year of vegan cheeses.

It started sometime in the spring of 2010. I had been intrigued for several years by the nut-based cheeses popular in the raw food community and had been playing around with them. The majority of vegan cheeses I had sampled were more like spreads, requiring a stretch of the imagination to think of them as cheese. But a few were stellar, notably the raw cheeses made by Roxanne Klein at her all-too-ephemeral restaurant, Roxannes. Caf Gratitude, a chain of vegan restaurants in the Bay Area, also had some winners on their menu. Still, if they were raw, they didnt melt. There was also, of course, the ever-increasing number of commercially available vegan cheeses that melted to a degree, which had improved in quality and variety over the years, but to my taste buds they still had a somewhat artificial flavor and werent up to cheese board standards. What to do?

The answer was clear. It was time to make good on my promise. With a vegetarian fundraiser at my house coming up, I decided to spend a few weeks experimenting with nut-based cheeses. My goal was to put together a platter of vegan cheeses as the centerpiece of the buffet. I figured that the vegan and vegetarian community would be supportive of any attempt at cheese, making this a safe venue in which to embark on my venture. I presented Brie, flavored chvre, Gruyre, and a few other cheeses. And then I retreated to the kitchen to see how people reacted. Well, they raved. Afterward I even heard from people who hadnt been there but had found out about the cheeses through the grapevine. That was all great feedback, but hey, it was still a vegan crowd.

So I kept at it, coming up with more varieties, and I started serving them to my omnivorous friends, including at a big holiday party. Their reactions were the same as those from the vegans and vegetarians, only the omnivores often told me that they couldnt tell the difference between my cheeses and the real stuff. This was exciting, and I threw myself headlong into my cheese experiment.

My kitchen became a laboratory, with cheeses lying around everywhere as I attempted to age them while fending off mold. People would look quizzically at the rounds strewn around the kitchen and wonder what they were. From the initial nut-based cheeses to varieties made from yogurt to the day I finally found a way to make a vegan cheese that actually melted, I had a couple of cheeses in the works at all times and would prod anyone who walked into the house into trying some. Some of the cheeses were, of course, less delectable, and a few ended up in my compost pile, but many met with rave reviews.

It has now been about a year since my big cheese experiment began, and I finally have that trove of cheese recipes. But the journey has only just begun. As the deadline for this book fast approaches, I continue to dream up new ways to make cheeses and another lightbulb turns onand then I have to remind myself that now is the time for me to buckle down and finish writing this book rather than puttering around the kitchen. So for the time being, I dont have as many cheeses sitting on my counters, but Ill be back in my cheese laboratory soon enough, developing more recipes to add to the next edition of this book. In the meantime, I hope youll find these cheeses fun and compelling enough to serve not only to vegans but to your omnivorous friends as well.