As a plant-based cheesemonger opens in London, it’s not just farmers who find it hard to swallow, says Xanthe Clay
Earlier this month, when the first artisanal vegan cheesemonger opened in Brixton, south London, its appearance seemed to signal a new gearshift in the normalisation of all things vegan.
Run by sisters Rachel and Charlotte Stevens, La Fauxmagerie – with its traditional-looking blackboard signage and speciality cheeses made from plant-based sources – also seemed to hit a raw nerve within the dairy industry.
Within days of opening, Dairy UK, which represents farmer-owned co-ops and private dairy companies, had asked the pair to drop the c-word from their branding, adding that to description to their products, which include wheels of handmade cheddar and creamy-looking, pepper-crusted soft varieties, as cheese was “misleading”.
Admittedly, all of the dairy-free block cheese I’ve ever tried from supermarkets has been about as convincing as a cut-price Elvis impersonator; mostly made from super-sweet coconut oils, they’re often laced with unexpected extras such as herbs, cranberries and “blue” flavouring, presumably to cover up their complete lack of natural taste, good or otherwise.
But ask a vegan for the one thing they miss from their meat and dairy-eating days and, if anecdotal evidence is anything to go by, chances are they’ll say “cheese”.
Certainly, the sale of vegan cheese is on the up, and not just among milk-dodgers. One in six consumers expressed an interest in dairy-free cheese, according to market research expert Mintel, with the number of new vegan cheese products doubling in the first eight months of last year.
All the major supermarkets now stock vegan cheese, which is perhaps unsurprising given that we can’t seem to get enough of vegan “mylk”; oat milk sales alone were 66% higher in 2017 than the year before, and one in five Britons have drunk plant-based milk in the past three months.
There’s no doubt that cheese provokes a passion among gourmets of every stripe that even chocolate can’t match.
Michelin-star restaurants pimp around their altar-like cheese trolleys, to somehow justify a double-digit supplement if you choose a bit of bought-in artisanal Stilton over the chef-made dessert that involved infinitely more expertise to whip up.
Instagram is awash with photographs of melting cheese stringing down from a slice of pizza or a fondue fork. And, seriously, who can resist the voluptuous bulge of a Camembert at peak ripeness?
Maybe it’s the sense of hitting the jackpot, the perfect cheese moment, combined with the lure of a squidgy mouthful of salt, savoury, tangy and fatty.
Or it could be evolutionary: the cheese-making process breaks down the lactose in milk, making it digestible to early man, so liking cheese had a survival advantage. And it could just be in the genes as, according to researchers at the University of Cambridge, some of us are simply genetically predisposed to prefer fat – and thus cheese – to sugar.
But what exactly is vegan cheese ... or should that be “vegan plant-based cheese alternative”? Regular cheese is made, generally, by adding a bacterial culture (for flavour) to milk – from cow, goat or sheep – and a coagulant to separate the curds and the whey, usually either rennet (a complex set of enzymes extracted from animals) or vegetable rennet, traditionally from a kind of thistle.
The whey is strained off, and the curds are your cheese — ready for pressing and ageing for hard cheese, inoculating with moulds to make blue cheese, or simply eating as it is as cream cheese. Some simple cheeses, like Indian paneer, are made without a culture, by adding acid to milk to separate the curds and whey, before straining, but broadly the technique remains the same.
With vegan cheese, however, there are no rules. It can be made in a number of ways, and from a limitless number of ingredients. I could, theoretically, chill a block of mashed potato and call it “cheez” although I’d be well advised to add a dash of flavouring and a bit of gum to give it a bouncy texture.
In reality, the “original flavour slices” sold in the supermarket is made using a milk extracted from nuts or soya, which is cooked with ingredients including oil, thickeners, flavouring and probably emulsifier, then set in blocks before packaging.
It’s not dissimilar from the way regular processed cheese slices are made (although this will involve some actual cheese and dairy milk in the base).
No surprises, then, that it tastes closer to processed cheese than the farmers’ market kind.
Gizzi Erskine, the chef behind the uber-successful vegan burger pop-up Filth, says getting the “cheese” topping right was the final piece in her jigsaw, one that took months to perfect.
“Cheese is a tongue-in-cheek term. To me, cheese is something that has been cultured, but processed cheese isn’t cultured anyway. “Junk food is a place where vegan cheese works well.”
Erskine’s point – that there is a place for vegan products, even for those of us who enjoy “real” cheese and milk – seems to be hitting home as, according to Mintel, more than two-thirds of people who use plant-based milks also use standard cow’s milk.
Chef Chantelle Nicholson, author of the vegan cookbook Planted, and whose restaurant Tredwells runs a vegan menu, says most vegan cheese is “nothing like the real thing, and a lot of it is a bit synthetic. “On their own, they aren’t great, although they are OK as an ingredient.”
Part of the problem is calling it cheese, she says.
“Language is an issue – it’s not really a cheese, more of a bulking agent or stuffing – a textural filling for a courgette, say, not something for the cheeseboard.”
Patricia Michelson, founder of the La Fromagerie cheese shops in London, agrees that the word “cheese” - and the puns, like “Fauxmagerie” – raise unrealistic expectations.
“People just say:’’Well, it isn’t cheese ...’.“ Vegan producers are making themselves ridiculous. We want to vary our diet, eat more plant-based food, but vegan producers need to be sensible about it, and work on refining the product, making it delicious.”
She may not be waiting long. A new wave of artisan vegan-cheese makers is coming: the likes of Ketan Majmudar, who makes Silver Moon vegan cheese in north London.
His range includes the hard “Cheddary gold“, Roquefort like “Herby Blu” and a soft “Chèvre“, and are the only vegan cheeses that Nicholson rates as “cheeseboard-worthy” – good enough to eat on their own.
He also makes a cheese using a nut paste – either cashews or almonds – and add oils, flavours and a cheese-style bacterial culture to add sharpness and bite to the flavour, often the same as would be used in traditional cheese-making.
For the “Camembear“, for example, he uses a Camembert culture.
Some producers are getting even closer to traditional cheese-making, starting by coagulating plant milk, explains Majmudar.
“We are all experimenting with methods. It’s very exciting,” he says.
While the US has led the way with vegan cheesemakers, thanks to pioneers such as Miyoko Schinner, author of Artisan Vegan Cheese, British vegan cheesemakers are fast catching up. “In the past couple of years, there has been a big explosion in artisan cheese makers in the UK,” Majmudar says, with big steps made towards “the holy grail of vegan cheese” – getting a square of dairy-free cheese to melt just like in a Big Mac.
“The best thing is when I give people my cheese to try, I see the look on their face and they say: ‘I didn’t think that was possible’,” – lafauxmagerie.com – The Daily Telegraph