Foods new and familiar

January 5

By Alice Shopland, founder of Angel Food

I’m marking Veganuary 2025 by publishing a blog post a day.

When people think about going vegan the emphasis is usually on the foods you’ll be cutting out of your diet, but often the opposite is true. Like many new vegans I found my new diet was more varied rather than less: making this conscious change meant I was learning about new ingredients and new recipes instead of being in a comfortable boring rut. Quinoa, buckwheat, black tahini, millet, nutritional yeast, fermented tofu, black salt, tempeh and a dozen different pulses became regular ingredients for me. I still love discovering new ingredients, but I also acknowledge the importance of familiar flavours and textures, and the continuity of food culture.

My husband Colin and I recently visited one of his favourite beaches. It was the first time I’d been there but for him it was revisiting the site of a very happy childhood holiday. I loved it but I could see his enjoyment was multiplied: it wasn’t just the present experience for him, it was the memories that were evoked. I think familiar foods are like that too; our experience of them each time builds on previous experiences.

Back in 2004 my first visit to Blissful Foods in Mt Albert was like discovering a parallel universe. They specialise in meat alternatives: their products are all vegetarian (and mostly vegan), mostly come from Taiwan and are aimed at the Buddhist community (so are also free of alliums such as garlic and onion). For a while, I visited the Blissful store every few weeks and each time I would take home something new to try. My favourites were the crispy chicken and the chicken with basil. I liked the taste and texture of the ‘Lotus Chicken’ but wasn’t so keen on the fact that it was made in the shape of a miniature whole chicken, complete with a head. And I had absolutely no desire to try the vegan spleen.

All the products are made from similar ingredients, but my aversion to particular shapes was a reminder of the cultural importance of familiar food. It did occur to me that I was a total hypocrite because I was happy to eat vegan meat in the shape of animals which I had been raised to consider as food animals, but if someone was making vegan meat in the shape of human flesh, I wouldn’t be able to eat it.

People have often asked why we go to such lengths to make plant-based versions of dairy cheese. “Why not just make something completely new?” I understand the sentiment but it could take years of educational marketing for “something completely new” to get established. Familiar foods look and taste ‘right’ to us. We’re creatures of habit and, no matter how much we insist we want more choice and shiny new things, we tend to stick with what we know.

Often, behind the “Why not just make something completely new?” question is some outrage that I want to take people’s culinary habits, especially cheese, from them. All forms of culture, including food culture, are continually evolving. The evolution is usually so gradual that we don’t notice it, but to the casual observer, vegan food probably seems to have emerged from nowhere very quickly. But making plant-based versions of animal products is nothing new. Buddhist cooks in Asia have been making seitan, a plant-based meat alternative, from wheat for 1500 years. In Lebanon, there is a tradition of using bulgur wheat to make a plant-based soft cheese called keshek el fouqara (literally “poor man’s cheese”).

And making familiar food from different ingredients isn’t just a vegan thing: custard was originally made with egg, but is now usually made with cornflour instead because of cost and convenience; bread, pasta, cake and cookies used to be largely made from wheat but can now be made with a wide range of non-wheat ingredients to suit coeliacs and other gluten-avoiders.

Food isn’t just about calories, taste and nutrition, it also links us with our past and our present. I remember a friend saying that when he was making vegan food for non-vegans, he was always careful to make “named dishes”, familiar meals like lasagne or shepherd’s pie, because it reduced the anxiety that unfamiliarity can cause, and that approach makes a lot of sense to me. Some meals are harder to veganise than others: one Angel Food customer told me about how she used to make ‘ghost roast’ versions of her former meat-centric roast dinners, with generous quantities of all the vegetables and side dishes you’d expect, just no roast meat. When we think of 'comfort food' we usually think of meals we ate as children, especially starchy and fatty meals. And when we become parents ourselves, we naturally want to serve our children the sorts of food we loved as children. When Angel Food was starting out, dairy-free options were much less common than they are now. We took part in gluten-free and allergy shows because they were the closest match for our customer base. I remember how amazed some parents were when they realised our products meant their kids would be able to enjoy basic foods like macaroni cheese and pizza. One mother was so happy about it that she actually shed a tear. (I welled up with tears of happiness in a similar situation, when Philippa from Tart Bakery gave me a taste of a vegan pain au chocolat she was developing: that kind of patisserie was something I thought I’d never eat again.)

Non-vegans don’t tend to have a problem with people avoiding dairy for allergy or intolerance reasons. But some non-vegans get very defensive towards those of us avoiding dairy because of the impacts on animals and the environment.