Kite Hill - artisanal VEGAN cheese!

[Hell Hath No Fury]

I am going to pick some up after work today -- they are working on a bleu! (the one devil cheese that keeps me from going vegan):



Tal Ronnen, the goateed chef behind Kite Hill, quivers with humiliation as he recalls the beginning of his three-year quest to create the world's best vegan cheese.

"Steve Wynn had just gone vegan," Ronnen says, referring to the Las Vegas casino magnate. "In 2009, he hired me to develop vegan menus for 12 of his restaurants." Ronnen was well known for having designed Oprah Winfrey's 21-day vegan cleanse. Nevertheless, he felt intimidated by the task of creating vegan menus for a half-dozen cuisines at once. So he was already nervous when he brought Wynn's chefs together for a tasting of vegan alternatives to staples like eggs, butter and milk.

"I brought in a vegan cheese that I thought was a decent product, and one of Wynn's chefs spit it out in front of everybody," Ronnen says, still palpably mortified. "It was so embarrassing."

The story of what happened next— Ronnen's journey through old-world cheesemaking, 21st-century biotech and Silicon Valley venture capital—perfectly expresses the newest wave in culinary entrepreneurialism: an exquisitely Californian combination of environmentalist and vegan ethics, earnest commitment to flavor and pleasure and confidence that money and technology can make the world a better place.

Even more intriguing, Ronnen also represents a trend of curious chefs opening their own research-and-development studios to chase their most out-there inspirations. In Copenhagen, chef René Redzepi's Nordic Food Lab recently received a six-figure grant from a Danish nonprofit to fund experiments in "insect gastronomy" as part of a United Nations push to get humans eating a more environmentally sustainable diet. And Momofuku chef David Chang's New York City lab is a hive of microbial projects, as his R&D team creates umami-rich, miso-style pastes out of pistachios, sweet potatoes and chickpeas. For some chefs, these labs are mostly about inventing new dishes for their own kitchens, but for others, like Chang and Ronnen, they hold the promise of reaching a far bigger audience.

http://www.foodandwine.com/articles/engineering-the-future-of-artisanal-vegan-cheese

[DetlefK]

1. If it doesn't melt, it's not cheese.

I honestly don't get vegans. Vegetarian is better for the environment. Eating less cow-products is better for the environment. But why would one go full vegan?

[Hell Hath No Fury]

2. When your primary concern is animal cruelty -

then vegan is the only real option. The dairy industry still equals dead animals who have often been kept in horrible conditions. I don't want to eat that kind of pain.

[StrayKat]

3. One Reason

Because substituting cheese for meat isn't really using less cow product. You still need to (factory) farm those cows for their milk, which is food for their babies. So, if you want to use the milk for yourself instead, you not only need to keep the cows raped and pregnant to stimulate lactation, you also need to slaughter the babies (at least the bulls) and waste them or use them to perpetuate the veal industry. Going full vegan goes much, much farther to reduce environmental harm, if that's your goal.

The estimates that I've seen that indicate that going vegetarian would help the environment assume that the change would include and increase in plant-product consumption. Simply substituting 4 oz of cheese for 4 oz of meat isn't a large help to the environment.

While the environmental consequences of eating meat are frequently discussed, the fact that cheese is also one of the top climate culprits may come as a surprise to many. But it takes 10 pounds of milk to make one pound of cheese, Hamerschlag explained. That equates to a lot of methane and manure from dairy cows. - HuffPo

[byronius]

6. I was a vegetarian for fifteen years, but then I went vegan.

Good lord, like turning on a light bulb. I recover from exercise faster, I'm stronger, smarter, feel better -- I'll never go back. Amazing what it did for me.

Dairy sucks.

[StrayKat]

4. Please let us know how you like it.

My mother was swayed to eat pretty much vegan a few years ago, but still gets a wistful look when she passes a wheal of stilton. She'd love to find something like this.

[Hell Hath No Fury]

5. Will do!

I have tried to go vegan several times over the years but that damned cheese keeps pulling me back in. I sincerely hope this will cure my cheese whore needs.

[RebelOne]

7. Ditto. I am vegetarian but cannot go totally vegan

because I cannot give up my cheese or ice cream. I have tried the substitutes, but they just do not satisfy me.